Youth Empowerment Web

PHILANTHROPY
AND YOUTH
EMPOWERMENT
FOUNDATIONS’
INNOVATIVE
APPROACHES
TO SUPPORT
YOUTH
© tagxedo.com
net FWD
GLOBAL NETWORK OF FOUNDATIONS
WORKING FOR DEVELOPMENT
Cite this study as:
OECD netFWD (2014), “Philanthropy and Youth Empowerment:
Foundations’ Innovative Approaches to Support Youth”, OECD
Development Centre, Paris.
PHILANTHROPY
AND YOUTH EMPOWERMENT
FOUNDATIONS’ INNOVATIVE
APPROACHES TO SUPPORT YOUTH
Participating foundations:
net FWD
1
GLOBAL NETWORK OF FOUNDATIONS
WORKING FOR DEVELOPMENT
The Development Centre of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development was
established in 1962 and comprises 24 member countries of the OECD: Austria, Belgium, Chile, the
Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico,
the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey
and the United Kingdom. In addition, 18 non-OECD countries are full members of the Development
Centre: Brazil (since March 1994); India (February 2001); Romania (October 2004); Thailand (March
2005); South Africa (May 2006); Egypt and Viet Nam (March 2008); Colombia (July 2008); Indonesia
(February 2009); Costa Rica, Mauritius, Morocco and Peru (March 2009), the Dominican Republic
(November 2009), Senegal (February 2011), Argentina and Cape Verde (March 2011) and Panama
(July 2013). The European Union also takes part in the work of the Centre.
The Development Centre occupies a unique place within the OECD and in the international
community. It provides a platform where developing and emerging economies interact on an equal
footing with OECD Members to promote knowledge sharing and peer learning on sustainable and
inclusive development. The Centre combines multidisciplinary analysis with policy dialogue activities
to help governments formulate innovative policy solutions to the global challenges of development.
Hence, the Centre plays a key role in the OECD’s engagement efforts with non-member countries.
To increase the impact and legitimacy of its work, the Centre adopts an inclusive approach
and engages with a variety of governmental and non-governmental stakeholders. It works closely
with experts and institutions from its member countries, has established partnerships with key
international and regional organisations and hosts networks of private-sector enterprises, think
tanks and foundations working for development. The results of its work are discussed in experts’
meetings as well as in policy dialogues and high-level meetings, and are published in a range of
high-quality publications and papers for the research and policy communities.
For more information on the Centre, please see www.oecd.org/dev.

EDITORIAL
There are an estimated 1.8 billion young people between the ages of 10 and 24 in the world
today. Around 90% of these adolescents and youth live in developing countries, where they make
up a large proportion of the overall population. Policy makers in many developing and emerging
economies acknowledge the pressing nature of the “youth bulge” challenge and are trying to identify
ways to successfully integrate young people into their countries’ societies and labour markets.
With regard to these endeavours, many other development actors have shifted their focus to
youth. Among these actors, foundations have allocated increasing resources and support for
exploring innovative ways to empower youth in developing countries. Youth inclusion is also one
of the major topics in the OECD Development Centre’s work, which aims to help governments
better design and implement policies. Foundations belonging to the OECD Development Centre’s
Global Network of Foundations Working for Development – “netFWD” – have identified youth
empowerment as a priority. They aim to share and codify knowledge in order to build on emerging
good practices and scale up emerging successes.
However, as this study demonstrates, their approaches and perspectives vary considerably.
They range from support of health and education to skills training, and from full-fledged youth
programmes to support of social enterprises that offer solutions to some of the problems faced
by youth. Yet there is increasing consensus that there are no easy solutions or quick fixes to the
challenges youth are facing today and an emerging recognition that youth need to be approached
holistically.
While there is little reliable or quantifiable data on philanthropic flows toward development,
and even less on flows targeting youth, this study provides a qualitative analysis of the ways
foundations work to empower young people in developing countries. It brings together case studies
from 11 foundations supporting youth and offers insights on the uniqueness of the philanthropic
approach to youth empowerment. It is not meant to be an exhaustive study of the entire landscape
of foundations that work with young people. Rather, it provides new research and evidence-based
examples from a sample of foundations that have pioneered particularly innovative approaches.
The youth bulges faced by many developing countries pose great challenges, but they should
also be recognised for what they can be: a historic opportunity for societal transformation and
positive change, if the right enabling environment is put in place. This study shows that foundations
can play a significant role in constructing this enabling environment and effecting positive social
change by helping to integrate youth into society, strengthening their employability and citizenry,
and thus empowering them to lead the lives they choose.
Mario Pezzini
Director, OECD Development Centre
PHILANTHROPY AND YOUTH EMPOWERMENT © OECD 2014 3

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This study was developed under the guidance of the OECD’s Global Network of Foundations
Working for Development (netFWD). It came about at the suggestion of the members of the netFWD
Innovative Thematic Philanthropy Working Group, who decided to pull their experience on youth
empowerment together.
OECD netFWD would like to express its deepest gratitude to the main contributors to the
study: Veronica Chau, Christin Hokenstad and Emma Broadbent from Dalberg Global Development
Advisors. The conceptualisation and development of this work was led by Bathylle Missika, Head
of netFWD and acting Head of Division, Policy Dialogue, with inputs and support from Alessandra
Fiedler, together with Emilie Romon, Illya Salado Trejo and Florence Longuève. The team is grateful
to Federico Bonaglia, acting Deputy Director at the Development Centre for his comments and
support.
The OECD netFWD is also grateful for the input and constructive comments made by an
independent advisory group set up to enhance the quality of the study and provide external
insights and expertise. These comments remained anonymous and were consolidated by the
Secretariat before being shared with the authors, along with comments from individual netFWD
members. Members of the advisory group included Gloria La Cava (The World Bank, Middle East
and North Africa Region), David Istance (OECD Education and Skills Directorate) and Guy Redding
(KickStart International).
The study is based on case studies provided by participating foundations, expert interviews and
a review of the existing literature. The organisations profiled are a cross section of foundations that
participate in netFWD’s Youth Empowerment Working Group, as well as other leading foundations
that are pioneering innovative approaches.
The authors thus gratefully acknowledge the important contributions of the following foundations
that supported this study by providing case studies:
• African Capacity Building Foundation
• Emirates Foundation for Youth Development
• Instituto Ayrton Senna
• MasterCard Foundation
• Novartis Foundation for Sustainable Development
• Olusegun Obasanjo Foundation
• Sawiris Foundation for Social Development
• Sinopec-Addax Petroleum Foundation
• Stars Foundation
• The Edmond de Rothschild Foundation
• The Rockefeller Foundation
Special thanks are extended to these foundations and to their senior management, who invested
much time and energy in this project and who reviewed earlier versions of this study and shared
some data usually not made available to external audiences. The OECD Development Centre would
also like to express gratitude to the Tony Elumelu Foundation, the Nike Foundation, and the UBS
Optimus Foundation, which provided comments and inputs to the study.
4 Philanthropy and Youth Empowerment © OECD 2014

The full list of individual interviewees is below. The OECD Development Centre and the authors
could not have completed this work without their support and good will:
Interviews:
• Novartis Foundation for Sustainable Development - Dr. Anne Aerts, Head and Kiara
Barnes, Communications Officer
• The Rockefeller Foundation - Eme Essen, Senior Associate Director
• Instituto Ayrton Senna - Tatiana Filgueiras, Evaluation and Strategic Planning Manager
• Emirates Foundation for Youth Development- Clare Woodcraft, CEO
Additional contributors through discussions on October 25th at the OECD, Paris:

• Tony Emulu Foundation - Wiebe Boer, CEO
• Stars Foundation - David Crook, Development Director
• The Edmond de Rothschild Foundations- Firoz Ladak, Executive Director
Finally, the OECD netFWD wishes to express its most sincere appreciation for all the support
and work provided by the Development Centre’s Communications and Publications Unit, especially
to Aida Buendía, Delphine Grandrieux, Bochra Kriout, Vanda Legrandgérard and Louise Schets.
The opinions expressed and arguments employed in this document are the sole property of the authors
and do not necessarily reflect those of the oecd or of the governments of its member countries.

Table of contents
Introduction............................................................................................................. 9
I. Setting the stage............................................................................................. 13
Why foundations focus on youth.......................................................... 15
The landscape of foundations working
for youth empowerment............................................................................ 16
II. The unique roles of foundations......................................................... 19
Innovate and design.................................................................................... 22
Operate............................................................................................................... 23
Evaluate.............................................................................................................. 24
Advocate............................................................................................................ 24
III. Challenges and recommendations.................................................. 27
Innovate and design.................................................................................... 29
Operate............................................................................................................... 32
Evaluate.............................................................................................................. 33
Advocate............................................................................................................ 34
Conclusion................................................................................................................ 37
Glossary...................................................................................................................... 41
Annex i. Case studies....................................................................................... 45
Notes and bibliography.................................................................................... 64

INTRODUCTION
There is a growing force – 1.8 billion strong – of young people who are searching for their rightful
place in society. This is the largest cohort of young people ever (Beyond 2015, 2013). These young
people are largely living in developing countries: 90% of the world’s population under the age of 30
is concentrated in developing or emerging economies (UNFPA, 2012). In Egypt, for example, young
people between the ages of 15 and 24 represented 24% of the population in 2012, or roughly 20
million people (Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics, 2012).
At the same time, youth in many developing countries are receiving better education. In Africa,
the continent with the youngest population in the world, it is estimated that 59% of 20-24 years
olds will have received a secondary education by 2030, compared to 42% today (see Figure 1
below). However, while GDP growth has been buoyant in developing countries, not enough jobs
and an insufficient proportion of quality jobs have been created to accommodate the numbers of
young people in search of work. In 2008, for example, Tunisia had an alarming youth unemployment
rate of 31% (AfDB, 2011), and in 2013 more than 40% of female youth were unemployed in North
Africa (Population Reference Bureau, 2013). These official unemployment rates often do not include
youth who have given up the search for employment; the “broader youth unemployment rate”
that includes these discouraged youths is significantly higher (African Economic Outlook, 2012).
Figure 1. Education among youths aged 20-24 in Africa, 2000-2030

Tertiary education Secondary education only Primary education only No education
Million
250
200
150
100
50
0
2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030
Source: OECD African Economic Outlook 2012.
Unsurprisingly, young adults are often at the centre of movements demanding reform and pressing
for change in their countries. They are motivated by record high unemployment or underemployment;
a lack of equitable access to quality education; poor governance and disputable human rights
records of their governments; and marginalisation from decision making. If not adequately addressed
and incorporated into national development efforts, these conditions can increase alienation and
radicalisation among these young adults, and result in growing poverty rates. On the other hand,
with the right mix of education, continuous training, leadership, trust, opportunities and support
at the individual and organisational level as well as within their enabling environment, they can
become the generation capable of tackling the most pressing issues of our time.

INTRODUCTION
Leaders in governments and foundations alike are growing aware of the fact that youth has been
both dramatically underserved and unheard. Until recently, development programming did not
target youth specifically, nor did it ensure that interventions designed for adults were accessible
and appropriate for youth. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)* focused on primary school
children and children under five, along with adults. While many donors and foundations do fund
or implement youth programmes, very few have a specific department or dedicated advisors
focusing on youth issues. Responsibility for policy is often spread across departments without
a systematic vision of how these different departments could better work together to promote a
coherent approach towards youth (International Rescue Committee, 2012).
This is changing. A very important category emerging for the post-2015 agenda includes the
‘’NEETs’’* (young people Not in Education, Employment or Training), who are estimated to account
for about a third of the global youth population (Assad and Levison, 2013). In some countries, this
proportion is even larger: in Zimbabwe, for example, 56% of youth between the ages of 15 and
29 have been identified as NEETs (International Futures, 2012).
Leaders are also increasingly aware that, from a macroeconomic perspective, youth bulges*
represent a unique opportunity for a country to reap the demographic dividend*. Many developing
countries are entering a demographic window of opportunity as their fertility rates and infant
mortality rates decline and the share of the active (young) population increases. When appropriate
policies are put in place, many countries experience a period of accelerated economic growth.
Accordingly, there is growing interest in creating better opportunities for youth. Policy makers
and other development stakeholders like foundations are looking for new ways to create and scale
up access to training and education, technology and economic opportunity for youth to harness
the huge potential offered by these demographic transitions.
Reading this study
This study is aimed primarily at philanthropic organisations that work with and for youth, or are
considering doing so. It is also aimed at other development stakeholders working with and for youth.
As foundations invest in initiatives specifically targeting youth, they find themselves

considering:
• Who else is working towards similar goals?
• What are some of the innovative approaches that philanthropic actors are using and what
are some of the lessons learned?
• What is the specific value added of philanthropic support for youth compared to efforts from
other development actors?
• How can foundations effectively partner with other types of organisations to increase the
impact of their interventions and better serve young people?
• What are ways for bringing successful projects and approaches to scale?
* See Glossary of Terms for all terms marked with an *.
10 PHILANTHROPY AND YOUTH EMPOWERMENT © OECD 2014

INTRODUCTION
This study provides insights on each of these questions by focusing on the unique role played by
foundations in youth empowerment. It includes an overview of trends, highlights specific examples
of programmes and partnerships, and offers recommendations to foundations and policymakers
on how to work together to achieve greater impact. It is hoped that this study will inspire further
dialogue, innovation and collaboration among foundations, governments, donors, the private sector
and civil society alike.
The study is constructed in three main sections. Section I underlines the reasons why foundations
target youth and sets out a typology of the different kinds of philanthropic organisations that work in
the field. Section II examines the unique and catalytic roles foundations play in youth empowerment.
It is structured on the basis of a simplified model of the “programme development cycle” often
followed by foundations, which can be divided into four stages: i) innovate and design; ii) operate;
iii) evaluate; and iv) advocate. For each stage, Section II describes the roles foundations play
with the help of practical examples from the case study foundations and beyond. Section III
identifies challenges for foundations along each of the stages of the programme cycle, with proposed
recommendations for enhancing the impact of youth interventions. The main findings from the
study are then summarised in the concluding section.
Methodology
Eleven case studies submitted by netFWD members and other foundations form the basis of
this study, with supporting data from selected annual reports and third-party impact evaluation
literature. Interviews were conducted with senior foundation managers and actors involved more
closely in specific projects to provide additional input into the case studies. Further source material
was drawn from published records, reports and interviews with subject matter specialists. In addition
to external review, the preliminary findings were shared with netFWD members and associated
observers at a facilitated workshop held in October 2013.

I. SETTING
THE STAGE
I. SETTING THE STAGE
Why foundations focus on youth
Foundations work with young people for

the same reasons as other development “Youth”: A life stage rather than a specific age
actors. They recognise that the transition “‘Youth’ is defined as the critical window in
from adolescence to adulthood is a someone’s life from the onset of adolescence
critical window of opportunity, while through to early adulthood. The actual
understanding “youth” as a stage in numerical age range for this can vary by
life rather than a specific age. This is region. The onset of youth can be earlier in
the prime stage of life to set a young person countries where youth, especially girls, start
onto the pathway to prosperity. However, taking on family roles and responsibilities
this is also a period of risk – it is during this earlier, and later in countries where acquiring
stage in life that young people tend to drop an education or a stable job may take longer.
out of school, experience unemployment The age range can span from 10-35, though
and unwanted pregnancies, acquire sexually 15-24 years old is the more common age range
transmitted infections, turn to violence or get used.” (OECD Factbook, 2012).
married prematurely. In many countries the
consequences of youth unemployment amount to a loss of several percentage points of GDP per
year. For example, across Latin America, negative youth behaviours have been shown to reduce
economic growth by 2% (UN Programme on Youth, 2011). Quite simply, this is the stage of life where
far too many young people fall into poverty traps, with long-lasting implications for their future health,
earning potential and well-being, and that of subsequent generations.
However, it is also a stage of life where well-targeted investments can yield enormous benefits
for youth and society alike. Young people can make invaluable contributions to their families, economic
growth, peace building and sustainable development (IRC, 2012). The dynamism, entrepreneurialism
and innovation young people often exhibit provide a vast base of economic potential if harnessed
adequately. Various studies find that countries that manage to provide youth with education, support
and opportunities will yield significant growth and contribute to achieving a demographic dividend*. For
example, in India, if the ratio of young female to male workers increased by 10%, the country’s productivity
would also increase by 8% (Plan, 2009). On the individual level, the returns on investment in youth are
just as evident. A review of 42 countries indicated that an extra year of schooling for girls at secondary
school level can increase their future earnings by 10-20% (Psacharopoulos and Patrinos, 2004).
The challenge lies in identifying precisely these “adequate” initiatives that empower youth,
which necessarily vary from one target group to another and among focus countries. Empowering
youth is defined in this study as “creating and supporting the enabling conditions under which
young people can act on their own behalf, and
on their own terms, rather than at the direction of Youth Empowerment*
others.” Supporting youth empowerment thus goes Empowering youth is defined in this
far beyond the youth employment or education study as “creating and supporting the
and skills agendas. From the perspective of enabling conditions under which young
foundations, working on youth empowerment is people can act on their own behalf,
thus defined by the question of how to create an and on their own terms, rather than
enabling environment that best allows youth to at the direction of others.”
use the window of opportunity at a given stage (Commonwealth Secretariat, 2007).
of their life.

The landscape of foundations that work for youth empowerment
This OECD netFWD study profiles a broad range of foundations, from individual family foundations
that work with grassroots youth organisations to large corporate foundations that are shaping
major global initiatives. The research for this study quickly revealed the significant diversity across
foundations in terms of their missions, strategies and operational approaches towards youth
empowerment. Any attempt to draw overall insights about foundations’ work in youth empowerment
is challenging. Accordingly, this study embraces this diversity rather than attempting to draw overly
simplistic and often misleading generalisations.
The landscape of foundations that work in youth empowerment includes:
• Individual family foundations. There is a broad range of individual or family-based

foundations, with the Foundation Center counting over 36 000 in the United States alone
(Foundation Center, 2012). Their focus tends to be based on the personal passion and
interests of their founders. These foundations are predominantly from and based in the
global north. The Edmond De Rothschild Foundation, headquartered in Geneva, exemplifies
this philanthropic tradition.
• Larger, more established foundations. They operate as significant sources of funding
for international development efforts and are increasingly playing a major role in high-level
policy discussion. These foundations are sometimes based on the wealth of high-net-worth
individuals, for example the Ford Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Skoll
Foundation, the Omidyar Network and the Rockefeller Foundation. Given their size and
clout, they can provide strategic stewardship and more holistic support to their partners or
grantees in developing countries, from technical assistance to scholarship and mentoring
programmes combined with unrestricted funding and seed funding for entrepreneurship
initiatives.
• A bold and new set of philanthropists from the global south. Examples are the Tony
Elumelu Foundation of Nigeria, the Sawiris Foundation for Social Development of Egypt, the
Instituto Ayrton Senna in Brazil and the Stars Foundation founded by His Excellency Amr
Al-Dabbagh of Saudi Arabia. This category also includes philanthropists from the south
whose foundations are at times hosted in the north, such as the Mo Ibrahim Foundation
based in the United Kingdom. Many philanthropists in the south have generated their wealth
themselves through entrepreneurial ventures, and they tend to apply the same culture of
innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship to their philanthropic approach as they did in
building their commercial ventures.
• Corporate foundations. In the United State in 2010, there were more than 2 700 corporate
foundations (Foundation Center, 2011). These organisations, when engaging in philanthropic
support, tend to offer a blend of funding combined with technical assistance and in-
kind donations. Examples include the Novartis Foundation for Sustainable Development,
Sinopec-Addax Petroleum Foundation, Equity Bank Foundation, Western Union Foundation,
East Africa Breweries Foundation, Safaricom Foundation and the Bharti Foundation, among
others. In many cases, their investments are aligned with their business goals, such as
entering into or expanding in markets, or sourcing talented human capital. Others act quite
independently from their corporate sponsors.

• Foundations that emanate from collaborations between governments and civil

society. These foundations often align themselves closely with the agenda of policy makers
and partner with civil society as a means of achieving the goals of government. The African
Capacity Building Foundation and the Emirates Foundation for Youth Development are
examples that fall into this category.
While foundations may vary in terms of their overall focus on youth, this diversity fosters innovation
and creativity in the types of programmes and models they support:
Some foundations place young people at the centre of their mission. A foundation’s motivation
sometimes stems from the personal beliefs and passion of its founders, often based in human-rights
based approaches and principles. Other times the drive to work with youth is based on the belief in
the power and potential of young people as the leaders of tomorrow. Some of the larger foundations
also have been influenced by research that shows that investing in young people, especially young
women, is the most effective investment one can make (OECD DAC, 2010). Examples include the
Nike Foundation, the MasterCard Foundation, the Emirates Foundation and Instituto Ayrton Senna.
Other foundations may not be exclusively focused on youth, but rather support youth as a means
to a broader development outcome, such as poverty reduction or more inclusive growth. Indeed, the
youth agenda is often linked to all of the MDGs: food security, education, maternal and child health,
HIV/AIDS, entrepreneurship, access to clean water. For example, the Sinopec-Addax Petroleum
Foundation works on the premise that providing youth with appropriate skills and tools enables
them to be “community change agents”, thus creating benefits for entire communities. Similarly,
the Sawiris Foundation’s mission is to contribute to Egypt’s human development, create sustainable
job opportunities and empower citizens to build productive lives that enable them to realise their
full potential. To achieve this, the foundation recognises that Egypt’s relatively well-educated
youth possess huge potential for becoming socio-economically responsible “actors of change”.
The Sawiris Foundation has therefore developed the Young Innovators Awards (YIA) programme,
which aims to stimulate the environment for scientific research and development among college
students in public universities in Egypt. Other practitioners of this integrated approach include the
Rockefeller Foundation, the Novartis Foundation and the African Capacity Building Foundation.

II. THE UNIQUE
ROLES OF
FOUNDATIONS
II. THE UNIQUE ROLES OF FOUNDATIONS
Foundations play unique and catalytic roles in the youth empowerment landscape that extend
far beyond funding programmes. They add value in a wide variety of ways beyond the funding
they provide, and do so throughout the entire lifecycle of a programme or initiative.
This study section profiles the unique value addition that foundations contribute to Youth
Empowerment programmes at all stages of a programme development cycle (as shown below).
Figure 2. The programme development cycle
Innovate
and design
Advocate Operate
Evaluate
Note: This figure represents a theoretical simplification and by no means claims universal applicability.
Rather, it should be understood as tool that aids at distinguishing, analysing and organising the different
roles and entry points of foundations when supporting youth.
Source: Dalberg Global Development Advisors.
• Innovate and design: This stage includes all activities linked to designing a new programme
or significantly redesigning an existing initiative. This phase implies identifying target regions
and beneficiaries to extensive research and mapping exercises and the actual detailed
designing of action plans, strategic frameworks, monitoring and evaluation frameworks,
staff and budget plans, etc.
• Operate: The operation stage refers to all issues linked to direct or indirect implementation,
programme oversight, strategic planning and continuous improvement.
• Evaluate: The evaluation stage combines all provisions linked to measuring the success of
ongoing programmes, namely monitoring and evaluation as well as impact assessments of
running programmes, knowledge management and the way that data is shared.
• Advocate: This stage involves all the activities linked to promoting or mobilising around
specific causes, projects or approaches. The activities supporting or facilitating the scale-
up of successful programmes or projects is key to this phase. The advocacy phase may
also entail the sharing of failures and lessons learned with the view of informing future
programming and of dialoguing with other partners.

Innovate and design
One of the most catalytic roles that foundations play in at the “Innovate and Design’’
phase is sponsoring research, identifying new opportunities and mapping out strategies for
innovative programme design. For example, the Rockefeller Foundation committed USD 100 million
to fund its “Digital Jobs Africa” (DJA) Initiative. This initiative provides funding to social enterprises
and NGOs with different models aimed at employing youth with high potential in the digital economy.
The Rockefeller Foundation designed the initiative to ensure that their grantees track and share
their successes and failures in order to learn from one another and develop more effective and
robust approaches to job creation for youth in the information and communications technology
(ICT) sector.
Foundations play a very active role in the creation of cutting-edge and innovative solutions
for youth. For example, due to factors ranging from poor candidate selection to highly repetitive jobs,
employee retention is a particular problem for the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industries.
In South Africa, for example, call centres have turnover rates as high as 20% (ThinkSales, 2011)1.
Recognising these shortcomings, foundations are experimenting with funding training programmes
that focus not only on hard skills but also on the soft skills* required of a long-term employee,
as well as the provision of broader accompanying education or skill acquisition. This is not new
in itself; what is different is the way it is marketed to the private sector as a business solution as
Impact Sourcing*. One of the social enterprises pioneering this approach is Digital Divide Data,
part of the Rockefeller DJA initiative.
Box 1. ICT and Youth Employment

The increasing availability of Information and Communication Technology in developing countries holds
significant potential for youth empowerment efforts, especially related to the creation of formal job
opportunities in the digital economy, as well as the improved access to information and training on the
individual level. A recent study by Dalberg (Dalberg Global Development Advisors, 2014) distinguishes
various ICT-enabled employment areas that have achieved promising results so far in a number of African
countries and merit philanthropic investment and support. These emerging markets include Impact
Sourcing, Online Work, Local Content Innovation, E-Public Goods and E-Entrepreneurship. Next to the
Rockefeller’s pioneering Digital Jobs Africa Initiative, a number of other foundations such as the MasterCard
Foundation are also integrating the ICT dimension into their youth strategies, be it by supporting social
enterprises that offer ICT skills and employment opportunities to disadvantaged youth like Digital Divide
Data or Samasource or using ICT to reach new target groups.
Foundations also serve as conveners/brokers to bring different stakeholders, especially

young people, together for programme design efforts or to develop sector-wide approaches*.
They sometimes use their position as relatively neutral conveners to help launch coalitions for
change, broker additional partnerships and convene grantees to facilitate learning and knowledge-
sharing, often through networks. For example, the Africa Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF)
and its members identified youth unemployment in North Africa as a priority and area of focus
for the foundation’s work. They used their convening power in the region to organise a forum in
Nouakchott, Mauritania, that brought together stakeholders who are focusing their efforts on youth
unemployment in countries across the region, as well as young people themselves. The youth
voiced their interests and needs: for mentoring, a vibrant job market, a channel for regular youth
participation in decision-making and training, and accreditation of skills that would be valuable in
the job market. Based on these inputs, the ACBF, youth agents and youth designed a programme
that includes: i) coaching and mentoring to empower young graduates to become entrepreneurs;

ii) supporting markets for young entrepreneurs’ products and services; iii) establishing a Youth
Council working group comprising institutions from the public, private and civil sectors dealing
with youth employment and entrepreneurship; and iv) developing a curriculum for a degree-level
training programme in youth employment and entrepreneurship. Efforts by the Instituto Ayrton
Senna and the Omidyar Network also illustrate this practice.
Some foundations provide much-needed funding for earlier-stage organisations,

programmes or ideas. This funding, which is not tied to achieving short-term results, sometimes
sets these foundations apart from “traditional” aid providers that focus on results over shorter
cycles. The foundations involved thus capitalise on their comparative advantages in terms of
organisational flexibility to experiment with new models or approaches and invest in projects that
may not yet have achieved proof of concept. Cultivating such new ideas is also linked to the explicit
willingness of many of these foundations to create a broader “platform of innovation”, which they
define as combining expertise – their own or that of their grantees and partners – with knowledge
management through systematic monitoring and evaluation as well as funding. This positions
foundations as “enablers of innovation”. The Edmond de Rothschild Foundation, for example, set
up a fund with the social enterprise incubator UnLtd India that finances for-profit social enterprises
in the earliest stages of business creation, when social entrepreneurs face the biggest hurdles to
launching their businesses. Other foundations also provide early-stage funding in the framework of
their broader strategic shift towards a “venture philanthropy approach” (OECD netFWD, 2014). For
example, the Emirates Foundation’s venture philanthropy approach to youth development entails
engagement periods of up to 10 years and the goal of transforming all of their programmes into
sustainable social enterprises over this period.
Operate
In the “Operate’’ stage, foundations often support the incubation and institutional
strengthening of organisations and enterprises that offer promising solutions for youth.
Beyond financial support to programmes, they often provide “capacity building grants” to reinforce
technical expertise, broker partnerships or sponsor speaking opportunities for relevant knowledge-
sharing events in order to strengthen the core or organisational capacity of their partners. Indeed,
in many cases, non-financial support is as important as financial support and has been shown
to enhance the effectiveness, sustainability and impact of youth interventions. For instance, the
Edmond de Rothschild Foundation systematically supports a two-pronged approach – providing
both financial support and know-how to leverage grants most effectively. The Foundation’s partners
are also committed to this dual engagement. Their grantee UnLtd India, for instance, provides
entrepreneurs with a complete ecosystem for success – capital, working space, professional
support and training. Another interesting approach to institutional capacity-building is the provision
of unrestricted funds* that enable organisations to build their internal and operational capabilities.
Stars Foundation, for example, strongly believes in empowering local actors through the provision
of unearmarked funds. “We find that all too often organisations are restricted by a rigid approach
to funding, which can limit effectiveness,” the foundation says.
Some foundations develop and implement innovative approaches to building the long-
term operational and financial sustainability of their grantees. With the themes of impact and
sustainability taking centre stage in the philanthropic sector, foundations are giving increased thought
on how to make their investments more impactful. In many foundations, long-term sustainability
of interventions has become one of the decisive indicators determining programme design and
operation, and, depending on the kind of intervention, some foundations aim for complete grantee

independence by the end of the engagement period. The Edmond de Rothschild Foundation, for
example, set-up a financing mechanism called Growth Challenge together with their grantee UnLtd
India, to fund the most promising social entrepreneurs unable to access market capital. In addition
to providing financing for the social businesses’ growth, this financing mechanism helps create a
track-record of debt servicing that will allow the businesses to eventually access traditional capital
markets. At the same time, the financing mechanism generates sufficient revenue for UnLtd India
to fund an even greater number of social businesses. As a result, after three years of programme
support from the Edmond de Rothschild Foundation, the mechanism is entirely self-financing.
Evaluate
Foundations are pioneering new methods for measuring the impact of their programmes.
For example, the Instituto Ayrton Senna has focused efforts on properly measuring its work in
order to generate evidence that will affect public policies. As a result, the foundation is committing
to developing a new methodology to measure “soft skills” in education. In partnership with the
OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI), the Instituto Ayrton Senna has
been developing an instrument to measure social and emotional skills to support public policy.
The measurement occurs at the school-system level to track the progress of cognitive and non-
cognitive skills and the impact they have on the long-term success of students. Student data is
collected and analysed in the Instituto Ayrton Senna’s database.
Foundations are also designing their monitoring and evaluation activities in a way that
allows them to construct a sound evidence base to facilitate future scaling-up of successful
projects. Anticipating the crucial challenge of facilitating scale-up once a project has proven
successful, some foundations are designing their M&E frameworks in a comprehensive and accessible
manner that will make it easier to convince potential partners from the public or private sector
to pick up pilot projects and bring them to scale. For example, the MasterCard Foundation has
pioneered a variety of partnerships with academia and the private sector to gather substantial
data on the impact of their programmes with view of facilitating future scale-up.
Advocate
Some foundations use their funding and technical expertise to bring youth to the forefront
of the international development debate and beyond. Examples include Stars Foundation’s
advocacy of investing in the capacity and sustainability of front-line organisations that support
children and young people, and the Nike Foundation’s “Girl Effect”, which mobilises global support
for investing in adolescent girls. The Nike Foundation applies its corporate marketing expertise to
build momentum around investing in girls and young women. To ensure that girls are appropriately
included in the development agenda, the foundation brought together the thinking of 508 girls living
in poverty across the globe and the expertise of more than 25 of the world’s leading development
organisations. The resulting “Girl Declaration” proposes five goals and seven principles. It is
supported by the signatures of prominent individuals like Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Malala
Yousafzai, who have thereby endorsed the effort to create a better future for girls living in poverty.
In this stage, foundations can also be important partners for specific causes that require
the mobilisation of high-level political support. For example, the Instituto Ayrton Senna has
become an advocate of higher quality education in Brazil. While supporting the development of

public school pedagogy in Brazil over the last two decades, the institute has come to recognise
that a complete education includes not only literacy and numeracy, but also non-cognitive skills.
These skills are the ability to learn from mistakes, make a plan and follow through, and hold oneself
and others in high esteem. Such skills are traditionally overlooked in Brazil’s public education. As a
result, Instituto Ayrton Senna, jointly with Brazil’s Ministry of Education and the OECD CERI, launched
a high-level policy forum on “Skills for Social Progress” in March 2014. The forum’s objective is
to promote the importance of social and emotional skills in fostering children’s lifetime success
and social progress. The forum welcomed ministers and high-level officials from 14 countries,
as well as leaders of major educational initiatives, superintendents of major school districts and
leading researchers in the fields of education, personality psychology and economics, among
them the Nobel laureate James Heckman. Central on the foundation’s agenda are the acquisition
and sharing of evidence about the significance of non-cognitive skills, as well as supporting
an advocacy strategy. The strategy involves partnerships for launching books and sponsoring
documentaries, the organisation of a forum of more than 30 organisations to debate the topic, the
launch of a dedicated website planned for August 2014 and continuous press contact to publicise
this important agenda.
Foundations also act as advocates and brokers of approaches that have proven successful
enough to call for scale-up. Many of the foundations that fund early-stage ideas often actively seek
funding partners who can help take their grantees to the next level in order to reach a larger size and
scale. The Novartis Foundation, which is actively involved in the project-cycle management of the
programmes it supports, uses multi-stakeholder partnerships to scale up successful pilot projects.
For example, the Novartis Foundation’s support of the Regional Psychosocial Support Initiative
(REPSSI) for children affected by poverty, conflict, HIV and AIDS dates back to 1996, when the
foundation, in partnership with the Swiss charity Terre des Hommes, helped develop the “Humuliza”
pilot project in Kagera, Tanzania. The pilot’s pioneering programmes provided psychosocial care
for children affected by HIV/AIDS. Today, REPSSI is supported by major international donors and
collaborates with 158 non-governmental organisations to develop and disseminate courses and
tools for psychosocial support, reaching more than 5 million children since 2002.
Foundations can also play important roles in convening policy makers and youth advocates
on a regular basis to engage in dialogue. For example, the Emirates Foundation serves as a
bridge between youth and the government of the United Arab Emirates. The foundation developed
a 34 000-strong youth database for the purpose of understanding youth trends and aspirations
through engagement, development, research and joint project collaboration relevant to youth
development. In addition, youth hold many of the staff positions at the foundation. On the supply
side, the Emirates Foundation works with the government of the United Arab Emirates and the
business community to secure political and financial support for youth development. Through the
“Business Breakfast Social Investment Club”, the foundation provides a quarterly forum for senior
business executives to meet with senior private sector and government representatives to discuss
youth development and related topics – e.g. talent growth, skills development and recruitment –
that are pertinent to the UAE’s development plans

III. CHALLENGES AND
RECOMMENDATIONS
VENTURE PHILANTHROPY IN DEVELOPMENT © OECD 2014 27
III. CHALLENGES AND RECOMMENDATIONS
This section explores the ways in which foundations could further optimise their efforts to
empower young people. It also discusses the main challenges that foundations face along the
programme cycle and proposes recommendations to enhance the impact of their efforts.
Innovate and design
Challenge: Youth are an elusive target.
Most programmes are set up to work specifically with disadvantaged youth. But identifying and
accessing “at-risk” youth, those who are most in need of support is a challenging matter, particularly
in developing countries where statistical capacities and population data collection are often less
comprehensive or not available at all. The additional cost of doing due diligence to identify particularly
marginalised youth populations, including through youth consultations, can thus be a deterrent for
foundations that do not have sufficient financial or human resources. This means that interventions
are likely to benefit youth who are more easily accessible or visible, i.e. who experience lower levels
of exclusion, for instance those already registered in an existing training programme.
Foundations also find it particularly difficult to consult directly with youth in programme design
and to integrate these data into programming. Traditional sources of information still play a dominant
part in programme design; many funders still rely on channels like donor conferences, newspaper
articles and academic research to inform their opinions, while the voice of youth is often not taken
into account2. As a result, research for this study suggests that funders, programme designers
and policy makers are generally keen to include such youth consultations in programme design,
but often fail to do so in practice either because they do not have the appropriate resources or
because they do not know how to target relevant youth groups.
Recommendations
Engage youth at three different levels in programme design:
Grant Proposals. At the very least, foundations should require partners seeking funding to
demonstrate that youth have been engaged in programme design. Progressive foundations could
even consider offering small design grants to enable grantees to conduct these ex ante consultations.
Monitoring & Evaluation. Foundations should require their grantees to involve youth more
systematically in monitoring and evaluation efforts from the outset. Recognising that some degree
of bias may exist when grantees consult youth (beneficiaries), foundations could also turn to youth-
led civil society groups, which can assist in independent monitoring and serve as a sounding board
among peers.
Strategic Planning. Foundations whose strategic focus is largely related to youth should consider
establishing partnerships with youth-led civil society groups, who could provide input from the
outset on overall strategic planning. Having youth organisations as part of these foundations’
selection committees or boards could also be considered.
Make sure to reach the bottom of the pyramid. Foundations should ensure that their
programmes are accessible to the most vulnerable sections of youth. The MasterCard Foundation
found that a key barrier to participation in more conventional job-training models for many of the
most marginalised youth was that they could not afford to forgo other more immediate income-

generating activities. Based on extensive engagement with young people and experts in the field, the
foundation was able to pioneer an approach to scaling up programmes that enable young people to
gain practical skills in blended programmatic models that provide them with both training and some
kind of simultaneous income (paid internships, etc.). Another example is the focus of the Novartis
Foundation on vulnerable children through the REPSSI initiative that provides psychosocial support
specifically for vulnerable children who have been affected by poverty, conflict, HIV and AIDS.
Challenge: Youth are living in a complex social context.
Youth interventions do not take place in a vacuum; the many social relations in which they
are embedded need to be understood and integrated into planning. Young people are strongly
influenced by the structures that shape their lives, and may be subject to pressure from actors
such as religious authorities or families. Programme design cannot ignore the influential role of
power relations. Approaches undertaken with a narrow lens to address a very specific technical
problem tend to overlook the opportunities and constraints of the overall political economy. They
may result in limited success at best or, at worst, in larger unintended negative consequences3.
Recommendations
Approach youth empowerment holistically. Recognise that young people are students,
consumers of health care, workers, care givers and more, and develop programmes that work
with the multi-dimensional aspects of this target group. This lens not only sees the intertwining
of issues that converge in the life of a young person, but also helps set priorities when they are
facing competing demands. Employing positive youth development* or empowerment practices to
complement education or employment goals for youth is suggested. The Sinopec-Addax Petroleum
Foundation represents a good example of a foundation employing a positive youth development
approach to all their youth programming.
Conduct political economy analysis at the macro and micro levels and re-assess
periodically. At the micro level, taking account of the cultural, political and social context of a young
person’s life must be undertaken ex ante and serve as a compass when planning interventions. Such
analysis must also be periodically re-assessed since context and power structures change over
time, making different target groups more vulnerable as a result. At the macro level, foundations
could explore making more use of existing data by partnering with other foundations in the field
or referring to data collections and indexes that are publicly available.
Box 2. Positive Youth Development

Positive Youth Development (PYD) describes the process through which young people acquire the
cognitive, social and emotional skills and abilities required to navigate life (see glossary). There is a growing
recognition in the philanthropic sector of the importance of taking a holistic approach to working with
young people and developing their self-confidence. For example, the Instituto Ayrton Senna is currently
investing in an approach to measure and evaluate soft/non-cognitive skills within education. The institute
is recognised by UNESCO as a leader in the creation and dissemination of new education programmes
that aim to strengthen the students’ sense of identity and provide support for achieving life goals. However,
Positive Youth Development (PYD) programmes often require intensive personal attention over a number
of years and, thus, are challenging in terms of both resource and scale. They are also difficult to assess in
terms of impact due to their focus on qualitative change.

Challenge: Many foundations have displayed little appetite for taking risks.
It is generally believed that foundations have high tolerance and appetite for taking risk. In reality
however, a general risk aversion is persistent throughout the sector. Foundations that are affiliated
with a corporation or a family’s legacy are rightly concerned about reputational risks. Smaller
foundations are appropriately concerned about the operational risks of taking more adventurous
approaches. The governance structure of foundations – which emphasises fiduciary responsibility
– can be biased towards conservatism in decisions about funding.
At the end of the day, few foundations can be said to work with the most marginalised and
excluded young people, especially in post-conflict and fragile states* like Sierra Leone or Timor
Leste. The result can be an inadvertent over-concentration of funding in more stable and better-
known regions. By focusing on projects that can deliver large results in shorter time frames, donors
– foundations included – are finding that their portfolios wind up disproportionately benefiting young
people who are already in training programmes or educational institutions (the “low-hanging fruit”)
and who are arguably not always in the greatest need of support.
Recommendations
Envisage taking risks as an integral part of addressing the youth challenge. Given that
foundations have a uniquely independent mandate and are ultimately accountable only to their
boards, they can and should push boundaries. Risk taking must thus be encouraged, both when
making funding decisions but also in terms of geographical allocations. Foundations can support
agendas that are unpopular with undemocratic regimes, for example encouraging young women to
exercise their rights. They can expand their work into conflict or post-conflict zones (e.g. supporting
youth in countries like Mali or Madagascar), and ensure that they are working with youth who do
not have other options for support.
Mitigate risks through partnerships and financing structures. Foundations can mitigate
some of the risks of moving into nascent or challenging areas through strategic partnerships with
other development actors that can offer expertise or more extensive operational capabilities.
The use of financing structures that reward success rather than effort (e.g. payment on delivery)
is becoming an increasingly common way of aligning incentives among organisations and of
alleviating concerns among foundation boards about taking on financial obligations to relatively
untested organisations or strategies.
Box 3. Alternative Risk Management Mechanisms: Impact Awards

One way of managing the strategic risk of operating in challenging environments such as fragile states is
focusing on supporting those local organisations that already have a good track record and local legitimacy
in these countries. Such organisations, however, are often scarce and difficult to identify from afar. One
solution to this problem is the use of awards that create productive competition and are accessible to
applicants from all countries through online application processes and other information technologies. For
example, Stars Foundation’s Impact Awards serve as a means to recognise and reward outstanding local
organisations that deliver impact on the front line. This method has allowed Stars to identify and support
local organisations in fragile states including Timor Leste and Somalia since the Awards’ inception in 2007.

Operate
Challenge: Tailoring operations to meet the needs of specific segments of youth.
Young people are not a homogenous group and their needs, constraints and the way in which
they fit into the social fabric may vary greatly based on regional context as well as religion or gender.
A well conceptualised operational model that approaches youth holistically may still fail on the
ground due to a lack of appreciation of local customs and norms. While there may, for example,
often exist an inherent tension between respecting local customs and traditions and pursuing
goals such as female empowerment in many developing countries, it is also the responsibility of
foundations to use regularly updated and thorough due diligence and political economy analysis
to be able to design interventions that take proper account of local realities.
Recommendation
Encourage grantees to staff their programmes in a youth-centric manner. The actors

providing services to youth are not neutral, and picking them carefully can determine the success
of a programme. Foundations should encourage their grantees to take a holistic view to ensure
that their operational model is youth-centric and inclusive and that they employ young people to
work with youth when relevant. Indeed, youth often respond better to young people. Girls often feel
more comfortable when supported by women. Extra attention may need to be given in creating a
culturally sensitive environment in which youth will thrive. The Edmond de Rothschild and Emirates
foundations have followed this path by trying to hire an increasing number of young people as
foundation staff, and by institutionalising the participation of youth in programme design.
Challenge: The attention spans of highly energetic, creative and passionate young people
are shorter than those of other groups of beneficiaries.
Foundations that are not prepared to respond to feedback or adapt to change quickly risk losing
the attention of the youth they are trying to support, or lowering the impact of their own programmes.
This suggests the importance of being flexible and making changes quickly, but not necessarily
following “fads” or moving away from more “bread and butter” development approaches4. Youth
programming must adapt quickly in fluid contexts where sources of information are proximate,
evidence-based and varied. This also calls for periodic analysis of changes in the political economy
so as to be able to reflect any major shift onto programming.
Recommendation
Be reactive to stay relevant. The world in which today’s young people study, work and socialise
moves quickly. Programmes that work with youth must follow suit and be prepared to adapt in
real time to stay relevant and design regular and rapid feedback mechanisms to make course
adjustments along the way. To this end, social media can also present an effective way of gathering
direct feedback quickly and at low cost. Rapid adjustment of programme design ensures continued
buy-in to the programme, leading to greater participation and ultimately more effective outcomes.
For example, the Nike Foundation developed a quarterly evaluation system that includes feedback
from participants as well as intended beneficiaries through written and video documentation in
order to improve its programming from one training to the next.

Evaluate
Challenge: There is a serious lack of reliable data.
Data on youth support provided by foundations often does not exist or is not comparable due to
competing definitions of youth, making it challenging to design a programme based on empirical
evidence. Further, identifying adequate indicators for a programme’s Theory of Change* can be
particularly difficult when dealing with qualitative data. Like the adolescents and young adults
themselves, the collection of information about them often falls in between the cracks, as they are
surveyed neither as children, nor as adults. Additionally, the data that is collected is often not shared
and compiled, leaving a very incomplete picture of the group that foundations are trying to serve.
Recommendations
Invest in rigorous M&E at foundations and grantee level. Foundations should design and
implement a monitoring and evaluation process that, ideally, tracks the full programme cycle as
well as the impact of investment, evaluates programmes independently and makes them publicly
available. The costs of comprehensive M&E efforts are high in both financial and human-resource
terms. This can make them difficult to shoulder, especially for smaller foundations. However, the
long-term benefit of compiling reliable data on the impact of interventions is important and can
contribute to more effective and cost-efficient programming. Foundations should also ensure
that they enable their grantees to undertake comprehensive M&E efforts by allocating dedicated
financial resources or technical assistance.
Explore partnering with actors from academia or the private sector. Addressing the
evaluation challenges with outsider expertise can provide fruitful results. Foundations should explore
partnerships with the academic community to design innovative M&E frameworks. One example
is the MasterCard Foundation, which embarked in 2011 on a six-year evaluation collaboration with
the University of Minnesota to assess the overall impact of its “Learn, Earn and Save Initiative”.
Another example is the UBS Optimus Foundation, which has partnered with the MIT Poverty Action
Lab to evaluate the impact of education projects through randomized controlled trials*.
Compile and share data through networks. The immense growth of foundations in terms of
both number and influence has seen the establishment of networks of foundations. These networks
have championed the innovative gathering and communication of project/programme data and
funding flows, as well as providing a common platform through which foundations can engage.
These networks need to be supported to report and disaggregate data in a way that can make
youth-specific work more transparent and accountable.

Box 4. Foundations and Randomnized Controlled Trials

Famous in the development community through the award-winning work of Esther Duflo and the MIT
Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), Randomnized Controlled Trials (RCTs) are increasingly being discussed in the
philanthropic sector as an alternative way to assess impact and design or do ex ante research informing
programming. Originating from the medical sector, RCTs in their most basic form are experiments in which
people are allocated at random into an experiment or control group, with the only expected difference between
the groups being the intervention they receive or do not receive. While they seem to produce sound evidence
on the effectiveness of interventions, critics are warning that RCTs are not suited for complex issues that are
difficult to measure with a small number of indicators and are also too costly to be employed at larger scale.
A number of foundations are experimenting with RCTs method nevertheless and are highly satisfied with the
results. One example is the UBS Optimus Foundation, which partners with J-PAL on all their programmes
to explore the causal relationships informing outcomes and also gives technical and financial support to the
implementation of RCTs in the framework of the Children and Violence Evaluation Challenge Fund. Another
example is MasterCard Foundation, which has supported a RCT of the work of its grantee (BRAC), focusing
on the Empowerment and Livelihoods for Adolescents programme in Uganda. This RCT tracked 4 800 girls
over two years and built an evidence base for the use of combined interventions that target to improve labour
market outcomes and changing risky behaviours simulatenously.
See Bandiera et al (2012): Empowering Adolescent Girls: Evidence from a Randomnized Control Trial in
Uganda.
Challenge: Young people tend to have idealistic expectations about what a programme is
going to achieve.
If a programme’s goals have not been communicated or understood adequately, this can result in
young people being disappointed and negatively assessing a programme when, in fact, outcomes
may take much longer to materialise. Foundations need to find effective ways to engage with
youth about their expectations and experiences in programmes and to manage expectations while
continuously directing feedback into programme learning.
Recommendation
Use social media for outreach and data collection. With ICT and social media, current
generations of young people are more open and transparent about their needs and interests than any
before. ICT and social media make it possible to engage large numbers of youth in unprecedented
ways. Data mining* of social media – the collection and analysis of social media content with the
help of specific software solutions – can complement more traditional sources of data captured by
governments. Mining social media data can help determine customer or target-group sentiments
and consequently inform strategic decision making. In both cases, the information must be shared
and jointly compiled to gain a more complete picture, all the time respecting the privacy of youth5.
Advocate
Challenge: Poor communication among foundations, government and the private sector,
which may all support different aspects of the social fabric of a young person’s life.
Many national strategies and development assistance initiatives have outlined approaches and
goals for working with young people. Yet foundations often operate in parallel and sometimes in
duplication of these efforts because they have not invested in researching the political economy
of development assistance or because they want to expedite implementation and demonstrate

quick wins. As a result, the existing programmes, frameworks and possible alliances around youth
empowerment are not fully utilised or cannot cross-fertilise plans that are domestically driven with
support from local youth groups.
Recommendation
Act as an intermediary/bridge between government and business. Governments and the

private sector are essential nodes in any network that enables youth to become self-sufficient
and productive. Governments offer systemic education and skill development. Through training
programmes and jobs, businesses ensure that young people are rewarded for these skills. There are
often conflicts of interest that make it difficult for governments and the private sector to negotiate
partnerships. Foundations can be the bridge between these sets of critical actors
Challenge: Transformative programme models are often resource intensive and/or require
the coordination of multiple sectors, making scale-up difficult.
Genuine scaling-up of a youth programme is rare, though attempts are being made (Reinsch and
e-MFP, 2012) 6. Many factors contribute to this “lack of scalability of interventions”, including so-called
“high-touch” business models, that require very close relationships with beneficiaries, thus making
these models highly transformative, but not easily scalable. Additionally, foundations often do not
engage with the whole spectrum of partners who could take programmes to scale, such as government,
donors and businesses. As a result, there is a proliferation of fragmented pilot interventions rather than
large implementations across regions that can achieve economies of scale and yield lasting results.
Recommendation
Prepare to demonstrate and advocate. Foundations should build a strong emphasis on gathering
information that would help “make the case” for the programme to eventually be scaled-up. Early in
the process, they could also identify what kinds of funders might be potential partners for subsequent
rounds of funding, and engage them early in a programme’s life cycle to encourage buy-in.
Challenge: Youth are often the unheard cohort in the public sphere.
Whether because many are too young to vote, do not yet have the purchasing power of their next
generation or do not yet have access to the mainstream media, youth are often unable to make their
voice heard. This is changing in radical ways with social movements in the Middle East, Brazil, Thailand
and Spain, but there remains a lack of systematic channels for the voice of youth to be shared across the
larger public domain. When foundations and society in general set their agendas without hearing what
youth think, even the best intentioned programming will be insufficient to meet the needs of young people.
Recommendation
Amplify the voice of youth. Open dialogues with youth and donors, governments, beneficiaries
and civil society. This has to be institutionalised (i.e. protected by appropriate laws and supported
by dedicated bodies) and anchored in state-building efforts, for example through state-society
dialogue. The UN Foundation’s Girl Up campaign is an innovative model for empowering youth – it
enlists various social media tools to equip adolescent girls in the United States to become engaged
in the topic of empowering girls around the world. These girls become empowered to mobilise funds,
write to their congressional representatives and build local groups of other inspired adolescent girls.
In doing so, they not only bring the voice of adolescent girls into policy discussions in America,
they also become effective advocates on behalf of adolescent girls throughout the world.

III. xxxx
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foundations?
CONCLUSION
CONCLUSION
Foundations and other development stakeholders are at a crossroads. The development
community is re-evaluating the MDGs and discussing the contours of the post-2015 development
agenda. In setting new priorities, actors are preparing to engage in new ways while emphasising
different priorities. Public-private partnerships are becoming more frequent, while the role of the
private sector in the post-2015 development agenda has been affirmed more forcefully than it was
in the original MDGs framework. It is widely accepted that sustainable and scalable change occurs
when governments, corporations and civil society collaborate. On the ground, this should translate into
contractual agreements among actors from different sectors of society and be applied to the youth
empowerment agenda. However, in practice, this may remain a challenge. While development actors are
applying increased scrutiny to their work7, and trying to learn from what has proved successful, they have
not yet put all of these findings into practice, especially when related to scaling-up partnerships across
stakeholders from different sectors, although exceptions exist (Youth Employment Network, 2013) 8.
Foundations’ support is critical for youth empowerment efforts. In 2012, private grants, including
philanthropic flows from foundations accounted for merely 6% of the total net resource flows from
Development Assistance Community (DAC) donors to developing countries. Yet, while their financial
contribution is relatively small in overall development terms (UK International Development Committee,
2012) 9, foundations are taking a lead in employing innovative approaches to philanthropy and providing
more than just funding: they serve as advisors, provide technical assistance, support research and
advocate for innovation.
The changing face of foundations needs to be acknowledged. Historically associated with

the global north, in particular the United States, the landscape is changing with the emergence of
foundations based in the global south, such as the Tony Elumelu Foundation and Sawiris Foundation, and/or
established in the north by individuals from the south, like the Mo Ibrahim Foundation. These foundations
are becoming an important voice in development. Many foundations are also changing their operating
models and experimenting with more business-minded approaches, associated with models – such
as venture philanthropy or catalytic philanthropy – that break with the long-standing non-profit dogma.
Based on this review of cases from foundations working with youth, this study found that
foundations employ innovative approaches in all stages of the programme development cycle
and have an important role to play in addressing the global challenge of empowering young
people. They can do so as promoters of innovation, by testing and operating new models that
work for youth or simply by experimenting and admitting that not all experiences are successful
and that learning also happens through these failures. In addition, the study finds that foundations
often complement the efforts of other development actors and can optimise them too. Yet, such
collaboration still represents untapped potential as it could become more systematic on an issues-
based approach. It could also become even more effective through investing in more rigorous M&E,
employing new types of information technologies and social media to facilitate direct engagement
with youth, and through bridging the gap between government and the private sector. In profiling
selected foundations, this review has led to a set of recommendations relevant to foundations and
other development actors that work with youth in developing countries.
This review further identified significant gaps in the current literature on philanthropic
engagement for youth that could be addressed by future work. One of the common demands from
stakeholders and aid actors in developing countries is to explore ways to structure partnerships more
effectively with the broad range of foundations that are active in supporting youth. The study points
to taking research one step further and possibly developing a handbook or practical guidance note
addressing these questions. This would require a comprehensive review of existing partnerships in
selected countries, an identification of the challenges they are faced with and an analysis of how their
partners have addressed them. The Guidelines for Effective Philanthropic Engagement10, developed
under the supervision of netFWD, could constitute the basis for such an effort.

GLOSSARY
GLOSSARY
Data mining Data mining refers to the practice of analysing existing datasets from different
angles in order to generate new knowledge that can inform strategic decision
making. Often used in the context of social media, data mining refers to the
gathering and analysis of social media data to determine customer sentiment and
support business orientation. (Source: Dalberg, based on Clifton, Christopher
(2010): “Encyclopædia Britannica: Definition of Data Mining”)
Demographic The demographic dividend is the accelerated economic growth that may result
dividend from a decline in a country’s mortality and fertility and the subsequent change in
the age structure of the population. With fewer births each year, a country’s young,
dependent population grows smaller in relation to the working-age population.
(Source: Population Reference Bureau, 2012)
Foundations Foundations are independent non-state entities that associate private resources
and deploy these through funding or by running own programmes towards
advancing social, cultural, economic, environmental, scientific and other public
good purposes at local, regional or international level under a defined legal status.
(Source: OECD netFWD, Guidelines for Effective Philanthropic Engagement, 2014)
Fragile states Fragile states is the term used for countries facing particularly severe development
challenges: weak institutional capacity, poor governance and a fractured economy.
(World Bank) The OECD defines fragile states as those failing to provide basic
services to poor people because they are unwilling or unable to do so. (Source:
OECD, DAC Guidelines and Reference Series Applying Strategic Environmental
Assessment, 2006)
Impact Sourcing Impact Sourcing (IS) employs people at the base of the pyramid – who have
limited opportunity for sustainable employment – as workers in business-process
outsourcing centres to provide high-quality, information-based services to
domestic and international clients. (Source: Monitor Inclusive Markets, 2011)
Monitoring and Monitoring and Evaluation describes a set of distinct but interrelated processes.
Evaluation (M&E) Monitoring is the systematic collection and analysis of information as a project or
programme progresses, based on targets set and activities planned during the
planning phases of work. It helps to keep the work on track, and can let management
know when things are going wrong. Evaluation is the comparison of actual project
or programme impacts against the agreed strategic plans. It looks at what you set
out to do, what you have accomplished and how you accomplished it. This process
can be formative (taking place during the life of a project or organisation, with the
intention of improving the strategy or functioning of the project or organisation). It
can also be summative (drawing lessons from a completed project or an organisation
that is no longer functioning). What monitoring and evaluation have in common is
that they are geared towards learning from what you are doing and how you are
doing it, by focusing on efficiency, effectiveness and impact. (Source: Civicus, 2011)
Millennium The MDGs are eight international development goals that were established
Development following the Millennium Summit of the United Nations in 2000, after the
Goals (MDGs) adoption of the United Nations Millennium Declaration. All 189 United Nations
member states at the time (there are 193 currently) and at least 23 international
organisations committed to help achieve the Millennium Development Goals
by 2015. The MDGs – which range from halving extreme poverty and providing
universal primary education to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS, all by the target date
of 2015 – form a blueprint agreed to by all the world’s countries and the world’s
leading development institutions. They have galvanised unprecedented efforts
to meet the needs of the world’s poorest. (Source: United Nations Millennium
Development Goals, http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/)

NEETs “A young person is considered NEET if he or she is has left the school system and
(young people is not employed or in continuing education. Thus the NEETs include unemployed
Not in Education, and discouraged young people as well as those who are considered to be out of
Employment the labour force or inactive.” (OECD African Economic Outlook, 2012)
or Training)
Positive Youth Positive youth development refers to intentional efforts of other youth, adults,
Development communities, government agencies and schools to provide opportunities for
(PYD) youth to enhance their interests, skills, and abilities into adulthood. The term
describes the process through which young people acquire the cognitive, social
and emotional skills and abilities required to navigate life. (Source: University
of Minnesota Extension Center for Youth Development, Key to Quality Youth
Development, 2014)
Sector-wide A SWAp is a process in which funding for the sector – whether internal or from
approach (SWAp) donors – supports a single policy and expenditure programme, under government
leadership, and adopting common approaches across the sector. It is generally
accompanied by efforts to strengthen government procedures for disbursement
and accountability. A SWAp should ideally involve broad stakeholder consultation
in the design of a coherent sector programme at micro, meso and macro levels,
and strong co-ordination among donors and between donors and government.
(Source: Farrington, 2001)
Soft skills/ Soft skills is a term often associated with the cluster of personality traits – social
hard skills graces, communication, language, personal habits, friendliness and optimism –
that characterise relationships with other people. Soft skills complement hard
skills, which are the occupational requirements of a job and many other activities.
Hard skills are about a person’s skill set and ability to perform a certain type of
task or activity. (Source: Career Opportunities News, 2002)
Theory A Theory of Change defines all building blocks required to bring about a given
of Change long-term goal. It is a presentation and articulation of the assumptions about how
changes are expected to happen within any particular context and in relation
to a particular intervention. (Source: Center for Theory of Change; Keystone
Accountability)
Unrestricted Unrestricted funding is an amount of money provided such that the giver does
funding not place requirements on how it should be spent. The money is deployed at the
discretion of the recipient of funds. Often this type of provision of money is in
the form of grants and used to finance the operating budget of an organisation.
(Source: Dalberg Global Development Advisors, based on interviews with Stars
Foundation and BusinessDictionary.com, 2014)
Youth Youth is defined as the critical window in someone’s life from the onset of
adolescence to early adulthood. The actual numerical age range for this can vary
by region. The onset of youth can be earlier in countries where youth, especially
girls, start taking on family roles and responsibilities earlier, and later in countries
where acquiring an education or a stable job may take longer. The age range can
span from 10 to 35, though 15-24 years old is the more common age range used.
(Source: OECD Factbook, 2012)
Youth bulge The term youth bulge is used to define a situation in which the population share
of the 15-24 year-olds exceeds 20 per cent and the share of the 0-14 year-olds
(often also referred to as the “children bulge” and a good predictor of future youth
bulges) is higher than 30 percent. (Source: Schomaker, 2013)
Youth Empowering young people means creating and supporting the enabling conditions
empowerment under which young people can act on their own behalf, and on their own terms,
rather than at the direction of others. (Source: Commonwealth Secretariat, 2007)

ANNEX I:
Case Studies
ANNEX I: CASE STUDIES
THE AFRICAN CApACITY

bUILDING FOUNDATION
FOUNDATION EUR 366 million. The average annual budget of the

foundation is around EUR 11 million.
Mission: The African Capacity Building Foundation
(ACBF) aspires to be the leading African institution, YOUTH PROGRAMME
in partnership with other stakeholders, in building
human and institutional capacity for good governance, Context: Africa has the fastest growing and most
sustainable growth and poverty reduction in Africa. youthful population in the world, with 200 million
Africans aged 15 to 24. Africa’s annual population
Approach: ACBF operates through three modalities:
growth of 2.2% and the fertility rate of 5.2 children
knowledge management; advisory work and technical
per woman is the highest in the world, adding about
assistance; and grant making. Partnerships are central
10 million youth into the labour force each year. With
to ACBF’s approach. ACBF partners with 4 multilateral,
more than 40% of Africans under 15 years of age, this
13 bilateral and 38 African country organisations.
figure is expected to grow significantly, leading to a
Achievements: ACBF’s key achievements in building huge increase in unemployment due to insufficient
the capacity of African institutions include: i) supporting labour market demand and a major skills mismatch.
policy think tanks that work closely with government
Programme description: ACBF gains a clear picture
to analyse, design, implement and monitor policy;
of the scale and nature of youth unemployment through
ii) providing training programmes that help to increase
targeted dialogue with young people in North Africa.
the cadre of qualified economists in public and private-
These insights are being used to inform interventions
sector organisations; iii) promoting financial management
designed to enable young people to enter the labour
and accountability, resulting in higher quality decision
market.
making and management of budgetary resources
within ministries; and iv) offering knowledge products ACBF’s south-south capacity building programme
on institutional capacity building to facilitate wider began in 2013, focusing on entrepreneurship and
learning across the continent. job creation in Mauritania, with the participation of
Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia. The
In terms of youth, ACBF was instrumental in the
programme consists of: i) coaching and mentoring to
development of the Nouakchott Declaration on
empower young graduates to become entrepreneurs;
youth employment and entrepreneurship in 2011; in
ii) supporting markets for young entrepreneurs’ products
the harmonisation of information through the Labour
and services; iii) establishing a Youth Council working
Market Information System (LMIS) as part of the
group comprising institutions from public, private and
Observatoire Statistique et Economique d’Afrique
civil sectors dealing with youth employment and
Subsaharienne (AFRISTAT) and African Union (AU);
entrepreneurship; and iv) developing a curriculum for a
and in the development of a Gender in Agriculture
degree-level training programme in youth employment
Index through the Empower Women in Agriculture
and entrepreneurship.
(EWA) initiative.
Coaching sessions will be led by coaches recruited
Operations: Founded in 1991, ACBF operates in
among successful businessmen and women in the
45 African countries.
West African region. Trainees will be selected among
Funding: ACBF funds its operations and programmes young graduates and young entrepreneurs as well as
through membership contributions as well as grants young professionals from civil service who are under
from multilateral and bilateral partner organisations. 40 years old. The coaching and mentoring programme
Its total investment over the past 20 years exceeds comprises several modules, including self-confidence

ANNEX I: Case Studies
building, new social media, the development of business donor community. For instance, the foundation is in
proposals and marketing strategies, e-commerce advanced discussions with private sector companies
initiatives, and skills in accounting, tax management, working in the agricultural sector that could be critical
public relations and use of databases of available actors in providing training for young entrepreneurs.
funding and grants.
Outcomes/Impact: By addressing youth unemployment
Support to Markets aims to support the development through skills and capacity building, the programme aims
and creation of markets for products and services of to have a significant impact on economic productivity
young entrepreneurs. This involves an intense marketing and poverty reduction. The project employs a theory
campaign through radio, print, TV, social media and of change and a result measurement framework, with
events to build demand. corresponding indicators, to track impact and extract
lessons.
The Youth Council is responsible for overseeing advocacy
efforts for young entrepreneurs, consisting of a broad Combined with the work the foundation does on
partnership between the government, universities, civil improving the capacity of countries to improve their
society and multilateral donors. The Youth Council Labor Information Management Systems (LMIS), this
will also lead workshops to establish key themes and effort is expected to lead to a stronger capacity to
modalities of the curriculum for a degree training integrate results from pilots in youth employment
programme in youth employment and entrepreneurship. creation into wider efforts of tracking impact of policies
using LMIS.
Partnerships: Partnerships will be formed with
continental and regional organisations, including the
Maghreb Arabic Union (UMA), the Economic Community
of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African
Union, as well as public, private, civil-society and
donor communities. ACBF is working closely with the
Centre Mauritanien d’Analyse de Politiques (CMAP),
an ACBF-supported policy think tank.
ACBF will further engage North African governments

in order to help them address the principal issues to
emerge from the Arab Spring, namely the need to
support the development of youth entrepreneurs. This
is planned in line with the foundation’s current strategy,
which recommends engaging with the governments
of North Africa to set up a new generation of policy
think tanks dealing with youth unemployment issues. A
key feature of this engagement will be lesson-sharing
workshops organised by CMAP to bring together a
network of agents responsible for youth unemployment
activities in countries across the region.
Scale & Sustainability: The south-south capacity-

building programme is a pilot project that aims to
build the capacity of governments to address youth
unemployment and to expand this initiative to other
countries based on lessons learned. The foundation
has a proactive resource mobilisation strategy for future
scale-up and is committed to seeking additional funds
from governments in the region and the international

THE Edmond de Rothschild

Foundation
FOUNDATION YOUTH PROGRAMME
Mission: Whether in Health, Education, Arts & Culture Context: Despite the dynamism and growth of
or Social Entrepreneurship, the Edmond de Rothschild Indian capital markets in recent years, access is not
Foundation works to promote social empowerment equally distributed across geographies or populations,
for a more inclusive and collaborative society. making it especially difficult for young entrepreneurs
to implement their ideas. Even successful and growing
Approach: The Edmond de Rothschild Foundation
social businesses rarely have a compelling record of
employs an entrepreneurial approach to philanthropy:
debt servicing that would qualify them for credit from
identifying key social challenges; developing bold
traditional capital markets.
solutions and innovative models through active
partnerships with key stakeholders; and measuring Programme description: UnLtd India is a social
outputs for sustainable impact. EdRF promotes the business incubator in India. It offers a “complete
professionalisation of philanthropy through the sharing ecosystem” for start-ups and more mature social
of best practices, co-funding and business acumen. enterprises, manages the Bombay Connect hub
and hosts a national conference for early-stage
In promoting youth empowerment, EdRF conceives
entrepreneurs.
multi-faceted capacity-building programmes and fosters
cross-sectoral cooperation (legal, financial, marketing, Despite promising achievements, successful social
communication) to support social entrepreneurship. businesses have difficulty financing their growth.
It bridges the gap between market demand and skills EdRF worked closely with UnLtd India to set up a
through practical training programmes and leverages financing mechanism (“Growth Challenge”) to fund
specialised financing vehicles to sustain enterprise the most promising social businesses unable to
development. access market capital for their development. Growth
Challenge responded to a triple objective: financing
EdRF’s holistic strategy also buttresses leadership
the social business’s growth in the short term; creating
and human development that translates into more
a track record of debt-servicing for improved access
robust organisations and improved efficiency from
to established, traditional capital markets for long-
the non-profit sector.
term growth; and generating revenue for UnLtd India
Achievements: Through its programmes and projects to fund an even greater number of social businesses
across the world, EdRF impacts thousands of young and increase autonomy.
entrepreneurs every year, providing financing, leadership
After three years of program support from EdRF, the
and skills training, professional accompaniment
mechanism is entirely self-financing. The model is
and organisational support to individuals and social
being developed and replicated in other parts of India
businesses.
with an identical goal of financial viability, creating a
Operations: EdRF is part of a network of family track record of credit and community building.
foundations that operate in Europe, North America,
Partnerships: As part of its strategy, EdRF
the Middle East, South Asia and Africa.
systematically builds broad-based, cross-sectoral
Funding: EdRF’s activities are wholly funded through support for its projects. More than a simple endorsement
a historical endowment. of the programme’s efficiency, it is an essential

ingredient to matching the programme’s ambitions

and objectives to the needs of beneficiaries and the
wider community. Support for UnLtd India comes
from corporate and private foundations, the private
sector, social investors and other institutional actors.
Scale & Sustainability: Both the early stage support

and Growth Challenge financing are being actively
replicated in several Indian states. Indeed, revenues
from the financing mechanism developed with EdRF
will prove crucial in financing this growth. Outside of
India, similar financial mechanisms are being put into
place for social businesses in Singapore and Indonesia.
Outcomes/Impact: Since Growth Challenge began

in 2011, over USD 1 million in capital and more than
550 hours of non-financial support and training
have been provided to 50 social businesses. Over
100 jobs have been created within these structures,
nearly 600 000 consumers have been reached with
socially responsible goods and services, a quarter of
the invested capital has been repaid, and an additional
USD 1.75 million in funding has been raised.

Emirates Foundation
for Youth Development
FOUNDATION outreach. Future score-cards will also track youth

satisfaction with programmes designed to impact
Mission: Emirates Foundation (EF) works to inspire, their lives.
empower and guide youth of the UAE to ensure a
Operations: EF is an independent philanthropic
sustainable future for the nation.
organisation established by the government of the
Approach: EF works with partners in the private Emirate of Abu Dhabi to facilitate public and privately
and public sectors using the venture philanthropy funded initiatives to improve the welfare of youth across
model to create a positive and sustainable impact the UAE.
on the lives of youth. EF has adopted the following
Funding: Funding is provided by the government of the
approaches to achieve change: i) identifying, educating
Emirate of Abu Dhabi, private donors and corporations.
and informing about the social challenges facing UAE
EF has an annual budget of nearly EUR 26 million.
youth; ii) developing sustainable enterprise-based
solutions in the form of structured programmes to
YOUTH PROGRAMME
address pre-identified gaps; and iii) motivating UAE
youth to volunteer and give back to society.
Context: Some 210 000 Emiratis are expected to join
EF’s programmes and projects are being transitioned the workforce in 2019. This poses significant challenges
into the model of “social enterprise”. To this effect, EF for the UAE. Currently less than 1% of the Emirati labour
is working to ensure that each programme adopts a force works in the private sector, and the public sector
sustainable approach that creates long-term social is unable to absorb the entirety of the local labour
value and is financially viable. The ultimate goal is to force. UAE youth also face challenges around skills
spin off each of the core programmes into independent mismatch. Published figures suggest that in 2011 only
entities – essentially social enterprises. 24.6% of Emirati students were engaged in technical
learning, which is critical to support the drive towards
All of the foundation’s programmes aim to address
a knowledge-based economy. The mismatch between
some of the key challenges and obstacles facing UAE
the types of jobs that will be created and the type of
youth. EF undertakes research and engages extensively
skills Emirati students are pursuing could increase
with a wide stakeholder base to identify solutions
unemployment levels. Growing unemployment and
to these challenges. Each programme is developed
disengagement of young people – due to their inability
in a phased approach in order to ensure that it can
to offer the relevant skill set required by the business
genuinely meet the needs of the market and provide
sector – increases the potential for delinquency.
sustainable solutions to local social challenges over
the longer term. Programme description: To address the needs of
UAE youth, EF created a portfolio of six programmes
Achievements: Over the past seven years, EF
across three themes: i) leadership and empowerment;
has helped more than 32 000 young people make
ii) community engagement; and iii) social inclusion.
positive contributions to their communities through its
programmes. Key performance indicators (KPIs) are Takatof is an example of a community engagement
used in each programme to evaluate and develop the programme. Inspired by HH Sheikh Mohammed Bin
programme on a continuous basis. KPI data collected Zayed Al Nahyan, crown prince of Abu Dhabi and
during 2013 indicates that EF has nearly 40 000 young deputy supreme commander of the UAE Armed Forces,
people registered in its database, of whom more than Takatof is a voluntary social programme designed
15 000 are actively participating in programmes. EF by EF to foster a culture of volunteering throughout
has also engaged close to 8 000 young people through the UAE.

Takatof offers young people opportunities to volunteer Outcomes/Impact: Since 2007, the programme has
for humanitarian, social and community programmes registered 34 295 youth as participants in the programme,
that serve those least able to help themselves. The of whom 78% are Emirati. Registered volunteers
programme trains, supports and connects volunteers comprise youth between the ages of 15 and 35, and
to deliver positive change and to promote collaboration include school students, university students, employed
with other third-sector institutions. individuals and unemployed individuals. Becoming
an active volunteer in Takatof is now mandatory for
The programme has a dedicated call centre and
any youth signing up for EF programmes.
powerful network of more than 34 000 registered
volunteers. Using various communication tools, the The foundation is currently developing more quantitative
programme regularly engages registered volunteers KPIs that can capture the real economic value of
in various events and activities and retains their volunteers’ hours. In 2012, Takatof supported more than
commitment through multiple recognition opportunities. 10 other sector entities looking to promote volunteering,
recorded more than 130 000 volunteering hours and
Partnerships: EF is funded partly by the government and
signed up 3 000 new volunteers, all of whom were
partly by the private sector. Private-sector partnerships
trained.
are with a variety of corporations whereby funding is
provided but the funding entity also becomes engaged
in the foundation’s activities. EF aims to provide a
value proposition to the private sector in the following
forms: Content and Thought Leadership opportunities,
by engaging them through various EF platforms such
as the EF Business Breakfast for Social Investment;
Community Outreach and Youth Engagement, including
access to EF’s youth database for the purpose of better
understanding youth trends and aspirations and joint
project collaboration relevant to youth development;
Employee Engagement and Programme Participation,
including volunteering opportunities for employees
both with the EF’s programmes and also within the
foundation itself (e.g. providing technical support on
areas such as marketing, business development and
finance), and opportunities to nominate employees
to become peer mentors and coaches.
Scale & Sustainability: The programme operates out

of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and over the past two
years has been extended to the Northern Emirates,
notably with the opening of an office in Dubai.
EF is working to ensure that Takatof develops its own

earned-income and revenue stream. This comes through
providing a value proposition to private sector partners
in addition to ensuring that the programme is run on
a “business basis”, with core KPIs, competent staff,
efficient financial management, and strong marketing
and communication networks. The foundation provides
technical and financial support to Takatof with a view to
rendering it institutionally and financially independent.
This is achieved through dedicated internal resources
(e.g. Director of Enterprise Transition).

INSTITUTO
AYRTON SENNA
Mission: Instituto Ayrton Senna (IAS) aims to research, Context: The dropout rate among high school students
produce and apply knowledge to achieve large-scale in Brazil is a major challenge within the education
improvements in the quality of education in Brazil, sector. In 2011, just 51.1% of 19-year-old students
in partnership with the government. Established to had completed high school. (In Brazil, the appropriate
achieve the vision of the late three-time world Formula age to graduate from high school is 17-18 years old).
1 champion Ayrton Senna, who believed in providing Considering the size of Brazil’s population, this translates
young people with equal opportunities to reach their into millions of young people who have been let down
potential, the institute aims to develop the country’s by the country’s public education system.
next generation so that young people are equipped
Programme description: Since its foundation in
to respond to the professional economic, cultural and
1994, the IAS has been working to develop and
political demands of the 21st century.
apply educational solutions to the main obstacles
Objective: The institute provides management services to students’ success, such as illiteracy, age/grade gap
to public educators. These services include diagnosis, and school abandonment. Ten years ago, IAS created
planning, training of managers and teachers, and the the SuperAção (Youth SuperAction) programme to
development of innovative pedagogical solutions to address this problem using a preventive approach. The
problems in the education sector. programme targets students in their final years of primary
education (14- and 15-year-olds) to support academic
Achievements: The institute trains more than
skills and reinvigorate the student’s commitment to
74 000 teachers and managers every year, and almost
completing high school. IAS targets underprivileged
2 million children and young people benefit directly
youths through this initiative, empowering them to
from the work of these teachers in more than
transcend the barriers they face and encouraging
1 200 municipalities in various regions of Brazil.
them to take control of their future through education
IAS is the first non-academic organisation in Latin and formulating concrete life goals.
America to be granted an academic chair in Education
In 2013, the IAS launched a new innovative curriculum
and Human Development by UNESCO. This recognition
for high schools that integrates the development of
asserts IAS’s position as a global leader in the creation
both cognitive and non-cognitive skills, such as
and dissemination of new education programmes
communication, collaboration, creativity, self-control
that are able to enhance the human development
and self-efficacy. The new curriculum is being tested
of a country.
in the Colégio Estadual Chico Anysio in Rio de Janeiro
Operations: Founded in 1994, IAS operates in more and is planned to be adopted by 53 state schools
than 1 200 partner cities in Brazil. until 2015.
Funding: IAS funds its operations and programmes Partnerships: IAS develops, tests and implements
with its own resources, donations and private-initiative programmes with local and regional governments in
partnerships. The Foundation invests annually about Brazil. Because IAS is a respected local foundation,
EUR 8 million into educational programmes. the Brazilian state agencies are willing to share data.
IAS also partners with policy organisations, such as
the OECD, to identify methods to monitor and evaluate
non-cognitive skills in education.

Scale & Sustainability: Due to Brazil’s geographic size

and the fact that more than 90% of children and youth
are enrolled in the public school system, IAS recognises
that it must develop large-scale solutions for public
school systems in order to make a significant, long-term
and sustainable change to the country’s education
sector. To achieve this, IAS makes available instruments
through which its curriculum may be implemented by
public education bodies free of charge.
Outcomes/Impact: An external evaluation conducted

by a leading Brazilian political analyst and economist
found that IAS programmes improved by 11 times the
national speed of improvement of the grade pass rate.
The evaluation showed that while the annual rate of
“progress” (“speed of improvement”) for non-partner
cities was 0.3 p.p./year, IAS’s partner cities performed
at around 3.2 p.p/year during the period 1996-2006.

The MasterCard
Foundation
FOUNDATION For example, The MasterCard Foundation launched

the Learn, Earn, and Save Program in 2011. Under this
Mission: The MasterCard Foundation advances youth programme, the foundation created partnerships with
learning and promotes financial inclusion to catalyse three implementing organisations (CAP Foundation,
prosperity in developing countries. Fundación Paraguaya and Swisscontact) that
support holistic approaches to creating training and
Approach: The foundation’s core principles are to
employment or entrepreneurship opportunities for
collaborate, innovate and achieve. It collaborates closely
disadvantaged young people in Kenya, Tanzania and
with partners to build knowledge about effective, proven
Uganda. A fourth partner, the University of Minnesota,
models that can be scaled.
serves as a learning partner for the initiative. UMN
Achievements: The foundation’s programmes are designed a common monitoring, evaluation and learning
serving more than 5.6 million people by providing a framework to help share insights and information for
combination of skills-building, education, employment each individual implementing organisation as well as
and access to financial services. across the initiative.
Operations: The MasterCard Foundation is an Partnerships: The MasterCard Foundation creates
independent foundation based in Toronto, Canada. It partnerships with a variety of types of organisations,
collaborates with 68 partner organisations in 46 developing including international and regional NGOs, bilateral
countries, with a specific focus on sub-Saharan Africa. organisations and universities. In the case of the Learn,
Funding: The MasterCard Foundation was established Earn and Save initiative, the foundation partnered with
in 2006 due to the generosity of MasterCard Worldwide all four organisations individually. Learning is shared
when it became a public company. It currently has across all partners because of a shared commitment
more than approximately USD 9 billion in assets. to the initiative’s goals. Each year partners meet to
share results, learnings and improvements to their
YOUTH PROGRAMME projects.
Scale & Sustainability: Individual organisations

Context: Africa is home to the world’s youngest are forging partnerships across sectors, including
population, seven of the 10 fastest growing economies government, educational institutions, and private
and an emerging movement of entrepreneurs. There sector employers, as part of the implementation of
are now 600 million people under the age of 25. By their projects. It is hoped that this work will lay the
2045, that number will double. However, millions of groundwork for future efforts to bring scale to the
people lack access to financial services or are unable projects.
to obtain quality education. The MasterCard Foundation
has chosen to contribute to a new inclusive, more Outcomes/Impact: Through this initiative, The
equitable Africa through work in Financial Inclusion MasterCard Foundation is testing an approach for
and Youth Learning. sharing learning among separate organisations working
with a common learning framework and objective. During
Programme description: Under its Youth Learning implementation phases, this approach is intended to
programme, the foundation helps prepare young people help organisations fine-tune and course correct. Upon
in sub-Saharan Africa to secure economic opportunities completion of the project, the initiative will contribute
and lead change in their communities. The foundation has to a significant piece of comparative learning about
formed a variety of partnerships and seeks opportunities experiential learning and enterprise-training models
to collaborate and learn across its portfolio. for disadvantaged young people.

While the projects are all still in midstream, young

people who have participated in each approach are
reporting an enhanced understanding of economic
opportunities in their communities and increased soft
skills. In addition, participants say they have experienced
increased confidence and resilience as they work in
the community, enabling them to protect their own
interests and safety in the face of sexual and financial
exploitation.
As a result, many youth are using this new-found

drive to plan and save for their future. The financial
literacy components of each program have assisted
youth in understanding how money and savings can
be tools to achieve their future goals.

The Novartis Foundation

for Sustainable
Development
Mission: The Novartis Foundation for Sustainable Context: Millions of children in sub-Saharan Africa are
Development (NFSD) is the non-profit commitment growing up without parents as a result of HIV/AIDS.
of the Swiss pharmaceutical company to patients The pandemic is putting their health, well-being and
with limited access to health services. NFSD works sometimes their very survival at risk – not to mention
with partners to deliver innovative science-driven and the development prospects of their countries at the
patient-centered solutions for optimal health outcomes. macro level.
Approach: NFSD operates on the core belief that Programme description: NFSD co-founded and
everyone deserves access to quality health care. continues to support the Regional Psychosocial
Taking a holistic approach to health, the foundation Support Initiative (REPSSI) for children affected
supports quality physical, mental and social well- by poverty, conflict, HIV and AIDS. REPSSI’s main
being. It aims to understand the needs of patients, objective is to help children and young people cope
families and health care providers in order to develop with their loss and regain confidence. REPSSI works
better health services for a greater impact on health in 13 countries in Southern and Eastern Africa and
outcomes. Together with its partners, the foundation aims to mainstream psychosocial support within all
takes a community-based approach, working towards programmes of partner organisations.
evidence-informed solutions that best optimise patient
Partnerships: Collaborating with 158 non-governmental
outcomes in developing countries. With this evidence,
organisations, REPSSI develops and disseminates
the NFSD helps to bridge the gap from patients to
courses and tools for psychosocial support of children
health services to health policies.
who are affected by poverty, conflict, HIV or AIDS.
Achievements: For more than 30 years, the Novartis
Scale & Sustainability: To date, the initiative has
Foundation has worked to improve access to quality
reached more than 5 million children. REPSSI works
health care for people in low-income communities,
through four branches in 13 countries in Southern
specifically targeting diseases such as leprosy and
and Eastern Africa.
malaria. NFSD has established leadership positions in
both field and policy work through its varied partnerships. Outcomes/Impact: REPSSI is today recognised as a
In particular, the foundation has contributed significantly leading organisation worldwide in the field of psychosocial
to efforts to eliminate leprosy, pioneering the use of support, with recognition from organisations such as
social marketing techniques to generate demand for the Southern African Development Community (SADC)
diagnosis and treatment. and UNICEF.
Operations: NFSD is part of the corporate responsibility

portfolio of Novartis. The foundation is a non-profit
organisation with 30 years of experience focusing on
improving access to quality healthcare for patients
in low-income communities across the developing
world, including sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
Funding: Funding is provided by Novartis with an

annual budget of approximately EUR 8 million.

OLUSEGUN OBASANJO
FOUNDATION
Programme description: Refocus Youths Empowerment

FOUNDATION
Foundation (RYEF), based in Nigeria, mobilises
students and their care givers to make school a priority
Mission: Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and provides funds needed to overcome financial
established the Olusegun Obasanjo Foundation (OOF) barriers. The mobilisation and sensitisation unit of
with the mission to advance human security throughout RYEF’s monitoring and evaluation division sensitises
Africa. students and their community about the importance
Approach: The five initiatives of the OOF focus on: of education, the role of parents in the education of
youth employment and empowerment, girl-child their children, girl-child education, truancy and poor
education, non-communicable and water-borne discipline among senior secondary school children.
diseases, leadership and food security. Partnerships: This work is done at the grassroots
The OOF’s critical success factor is its use of local level and is only successful with the support of local
knowledge of and relationships with the community, organisations that are known in the community.
private and public companies, market forces, and Scale & Sustainability: The OOF executes its
educational institutions. The foundation’s insight programmes by working directly with governments,
helps to select operating partners and to inform private sector organisations and NGOs to build
local policymakers of practices that can complement sustainable investment and operating models.
existing policies.
Programme description: The OOF’s programme
Achievements: The OOF aims to measure its impact has two facets. The first, entrepreneur competition,
through monitoring and evaluation that assesses both involves identifying high-potential entrepreneurs and
quantitative and qualitative effects. The foundation’s connecting them with mentors, capital and resources.
Youth Employment and Empowerment Initiative supports The second, youth mentorship and internship, involves
Africa’s youth by creating job opportunities, supporting providing career development guidance and preparation
entrepreneurs and supplying job-skills training. The for full-time employment. Both of these initiatives will
foundation plans to monitor: i) job conversion rates be piloted in three African countries and will target
of target populations of youths upon programme development industries driving economic activity in
completion; and ii) the academic performance of each country.
youths participating in its sport-based programmes.
Outcomes/Impact: The OOF’s youth programmes are
Operations: Established in February 2013, the expected to develop the skills of the youthful African
OOF promotes the advancement of human security workforce, support greater economic activity and growth
throughout Africa. in target sectors and countries, and galvanise young
Funding: The OOF funds its operations and grants entrepreneurs to be the economic drivers of Africa.
with individual and corporate donations.
YOUTH PROGRAMME
Context: Large numbers of students drop out of

school in Nigeria because they cannot pay school
fees of Naira 2 000 (EUR 10), even in installments.
Some students withdraw in order to seek sources of
income, while others are forced to drop out of school
to support family members or due to pregnancy.

The Rockefeller
Foundation
FOUNDATION Initiative description: In response, the Rockefeller

Foundation created the Digital Jobs Africa Initiative to
Mission: To improve the well-being of humanity catalyse the creation of sustainable ICT employment
around the world. opportunities and skills training for high potential but
disadvantaged African youth. This initiative is led
Approach: The foundation seeks to achieve its
out of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Africa Regional
vision through work aimed at meeting four equally
Office. The foundation has committed approximately
important goals: i) revalue ecosystems; ii) advance
USD 100 million (EUR 73 million) over the next seven
health; iii) secure livelihoods; and iv) transform cities.
years to the initiative.
Seeking and shaping innovative solutions at the
intersections of these four areas, the Rockefeller Outcomes/Impact: Digital Jobs Africa expects
Foundation maintains a portfolio of interconnected to impact 1 million lives in six countries across the
initiatives. Each initiative addresses two, three or more continent (Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria and
of the issue areas, often in overlapping geographic South Africa) though skills training and job creation in
regions. All incorporate rigorous monitoring to track the ICT-enabled sector. Working through its grantees
the impact of the foundation’s work. and partners, the foundation’s work creates impact
at two levels: through improving the well-being of
Achievements: From funding an unknown scholar
those employed, their families and communities; and
named Albert Einstein to accelerating the impact
by influencing broader adoption of inclusive business
investing industry, the Rockefeller Foundation has a
practices that lead to job creation for youth at scale
long tradition of enhancing the impact of individuals,
in ICT-enabled sectors. The initiative has adopted
institutions and organisations working to change the
three primary strategies to achieve impact: creating
world in line with the foundation’s mission.
digital jobs by supporting the Impact Sourcing sector;
Operations: John D. Rockefeller, Sr., established the exploring new digital job opportunities by working
Rockefeller Foundation in 1913. From its three offices with local organisations to provide skills training; and
in New York, Bangkok and Nairobi, it has global reach promoting an enabling environment for digital jobs by
across three continents. co-ordinating government and businesses to adopt
Funding: Funding is provided by the legacy of John inclusive business practices favourable to youths.
D. Rockefeller. Partnerships: The foundation works in close partnership
with other stakeholders – private sector, government,
YOUTH INITIATIVE – DIGITAL JOBS AFRICA civil society and the development community – to
leverage funds and align complementary programmes
Context: The current pace of job creation in Africa in order to achieve the initiative’s impact goal. For
cannot meet the demands of the world’s fast-growing example, RF grantee Digital Divide Data (DDD) is
youth population. Sustained investment in Information a social enterprise that creates better futures for
Communication Technology-enabled (ICT) infrastructure, disadvantaged youth in developing countries through
and improvements in the quality of and access to training and employment in the Business Process
education across the African continent over the past Outsourcing (BPO) sector. DDD works with a range of
decade, position many countries to compete in the NGO partners that are active in Nairobi’s urban slums
global jobs market and provide sustainable employment in order to target young people who could benefit from
for the continent’s youth. their work. These NGO partners help with referrals
and initial screening, providing additional support as
needed if individuals become employed.

Scale & Sustainability: The question of scale and

sustainability is addressed differently by the initiative’s
partner organisations. For example, the Community
& Individual Development Association (CIDA) and the
Impact Sourcing Academy (ISA) have developed a
full curriculum for accredited call-centre training, first
in Johannesburg and now in Durban. Private-sector
companies have approached CIDA/ISA to conduct
similar training for their employees. While the holistic
educational philosophy of CIDA focuses on character
development, ISA focuses on industry-driven skills
development that builds knowledge and experience
around working in the BPO sector. This packaged
training, developed in partnership with the private sector,
is an opportunity to scale the CIDA/ISA approach.
Outcomes/Impact: The impact that is being made

is demonstrated in another example, Samasource.
Samasource is a social business that connects women
and youth living in poverty to dignified work via the
Internet. Samasource has provided life-changing
work to more than 3 000 people, impacted more
than 9 000 workers and dependents, paid out over
USD 2 million (EUR 1.5 million) in living wages and has
grown revenue at a 77% compound annual growth
rate since 2009.

The Sawiris Foundation

for Social Development
Mission: The mission of the Sawiris Foundation for Context: Egypt’s relatively well-educated youth possess
Social Development (SFSD) is to contribute to Egypt’s huge potential to be “actors of change” and become
human development, create sustainable job opportunities increasingly socially responsible. This is especially
and empower citizens to build productive lives that needed in Egypt’s post-revolutionary society.
enable them to realise their full potential.
Programme description: The Young Innovators Awards
Approach: SFSD aspires to be a pioneer in the provision (YIA) aim to stimulate the environment for scientific
of innovative and sustainable development initiatives in research and development among college students in
Egypt. SFSD supports initiatives that focus on two main public universities in Egypt. Through a combination of
areas: investment in human capital through education, financial awards and practical training, the programme
training for employment and culture, and the provision builds upon the talents of young Egyptian scientists
of social safety nets for the poor through micro-credit to allow them to pursue long-term careers in the field
schemes, health and other basic community services. of scientific innovation in Egypt. The programme also
helps create productive linkages between university
SFSD’s approach stands on five main pillars: i) forging
research and applications in industry and agriculture.
effective partnerships with civil society and corporate
Since 2004, the programme has offered annual awards
and governmental actors; ii) an employment-backward
to students for research and design.
model in which labour market needs are comprehensively
assessed prior to the design and provision of training in Partnerships: SFSD is one of five partners funding
order to maximise job potential for trainees; iii) fostering this initiative, alongside Misr el-Kheir Foundation, Al
healthy competition among young people through Korra Foundation, Mobinil and Sadko. It has attracted
annual awards and scholarships; iv) instituting best additional funding and implemented partnerships
practices by going beyond grant giving and ensuring with numerous businesses, government agencies,
that grantees are supported to apply the best practices educational institutions and civil society philanthropists.
in the strategic planning of their project proposals,
Scale & Sustainability: Since its inception in 2004, YIA
financial management, monitoring and evaluation,
has grown to cover all 19 national Egyptian universities,
and reporting; and v) going to scale.
including all 67 faculties of engineering, agriculture and
Achievements: SFSD has reached more than science. The programme benefits from the involvement
60 000 beneficiaries through its jobs creation initiatives, of the Egyptian government through the Supreme
scholarships and micro-credit projects. This does Council of Universities, an affiliate of the Ministry of
not take into account its wider portfolio covering the Higher Education and Scientific Research.
areas of health and infrastructure.
Outcomes/Impact: To date, more than 3 500 young
Operations: Established in 2001, the Sawiris Foundation scientists, engineers and researchers in these universities
is a family-funded grant-making foundation. SFSD have received YIA awards or scholarships to support
operates in Egypt and, as of 2013, had projects in their graduation projects.
22 governorates, almost two-thirds of the country,
including remote areas such as Sinai.
Funding: The foundation funds its operations and

programmes mainly with its own resources through
the Sawiris family. SFSD has an annual budget of
approximately EUR 8 million.

The Sinopec-Addax
Petroleum Foundation
FOUNDATION • Youth empowerment can secure sustainable

economic and social development, and lasting
Mission: The goal of the Sinopec-Addax Petroleum peace.
Foundation (SAPF) goal is to address the root causes • Youth is an untapped resource to support
of poverty and to help deprived communities by Africa’s food security.
strengthening their skills and by providing them with
Programme description: By encouraging the
the appropriate conditions to reach self-sufficiency.
development of context-relevant solutions to problems
Approach: SAPF pursues an integrated approach experienced by youths, SAPF supports projects that
by focusing on three areas: health, education and work with young people ranging from provision of
environment. The foundation provides grants for cross- drinking water and solar electricity in West Africa
disciplinary and participatory programmes. to vocational agricultural training in Tanzania. As
As a corporate foundation, SAPF’s added value is its an example, the Tanzania project, implemented in
tailor-made approach to working with communities, partnership with Swisscontact, trains unemployed
direct contact and on-site presence, partnership youth and smallholder farmers and their families how
spirit with grantees and business acumen. This is to cultivate crops using environmentally sustainable
especially useful to grantees who are refining and methods.
professionalising their programme. Partnerships: SAPF has an established approach to
Achievements: SAPF builds on the experience of the working with partners. It always signs a partnership
Addax Petroleum Foundation and the implementation agreement that outlines all obligations and rights of
of more than 70 projects since 2007. Since it was both parties. SAPF also formulates objectives with
re-established in 2011, the foundation has launched corresponding funding phases. SAPF requests personal
22 projects in 18 countries spanning the African continent involvement by accountable project holders.
and the Middle East, as well as a partnership in China. Scale & Sustainability: SAPF only funds organisations
Operations: SAPF is a non-profit independent entity with expertise in designing and implementing sustainable
registered in Geneva, Switzerland. development projects.
Funding: Founded by Addax Petroleum Corporation, Outcomes/Impact: SAPF tracks short- and long-term
SAPF also benefits from support of the Sinopec Group, results. An example of SAPF’s impact is its vocational
shareholder of APC. SAPF has an annual income of agricultural training. Through this programme, youths
about EUR 1 million. are able to access the labour market with new skills.
The programme also supports entrepreneurship,
YOUTH PROGRAMME access to supply chains and produce markets, and
awareness of waste management.
Context: SAPF’s investment in realising the potential
of youths is based on the following beliefs:
• Fostering positive youth development benefits
the entire community.
• Helping youth develop a life plan can reduce
poverty in a sustainable way.
• Providing youth the appropriate skills to be
critically aware enables them to be community
change agents.

STARS Foundation
Mission: Stars Foundation invests in organisations and Context: Kenya’s unemployment rate is 40%; more
ideas that transform the lives of disadvantaged children than half of those out of work are young people. With
and their communities globally. The foundation has close to two-thirds of Kenyans under the age of 35, the
committed to reaching 20 million people by 2020. Its number of young people attempting – but failing – to
flagship programme, the Stars Impact Awards, recognise enter the active labour force each year is growing by
and reward effective local organisations on the front the hundreds of thousands.
line in the fight against poverty and child mortality.
Programme description: In response to Kenya’s
Approach: Stars’ approach is defined by four pillars: a unemployment crisis, two web designers in 2001
focus on the well-being of children; a belief in unlocking established NairoBits Trust, an organisation targeting
the power of local organisations; a commitment to Kenyan youth living in poverty in one of Kenya’s many
sharing examples of effective practice; and a desire to informal settlements. NairoBits aims to improve their
accelerate progress through partnerships, including ability to enter the labour market by training vulnerable
with governments and private sector actors. Stars young people in digital technologies, including advanced
advocates for more responsive relationships with web and multimedia design courses. NairoBits also
– and better enabling environments for – civil society offers “soft skills” through employability training,
in order to support local ownership of the development sexual-health workshops and peacebuilding games.
agenda.
After selecting NairoBits as a “Small Award Winner”
Achievements: To date, Stars has awarded more in the 2012 Stars Impact Awards, Stars convened a
than 50 local NGOs working with more than 2 million group of trusts and foundations interested in supporting
people across 24 different countries. In many cases, enterprise and youth employment in Africa. The
the award has enabled recipient organisations to secure collaborative group is currently exploring ways in
additional funding, raise their profile and build new which it might further support NairoBits.
partnerships.
Partnerships: The organisation has established a number
Operations: Founded in 2001 by Al-Dabbagh Group of partnerships with community-based organisations as
and based in London, Stars is an independent charitable well as local and international companies. This has had
foundation with three main programmes, two of a major impact on the sustainability of its programmes.
which directly support local grassroots organisations
Scale & Sustainability: NairoBits’ programmes reach
working with children and young people. The flagship
more than 4 000 Kenyan young people each year, with
programme, the Stars Impact Awards, are open to local
plans to expand geographical reach. Its success has
NGOs operating in the 100 countries where under-five
led to similar projects being established in Tanzania
mortality rates are highest, working in the areas of
(ZanziBits), Ethiopia (AddisBits) and Uganda (KampaBits).
Health, Education, Protection and WASH.
With only 2% of the organisation’s annual donations
Funding: Stars has an annual budget of GBP 2.2 million,
and funding assigned as “unrestricted”, NairoBits
the majority of which is provided by Al-Dabbagh Group.
allocated a portion of the Stars funding toward core
Partners such as The Ashmore Foundation have also
costs to safeguard the resilience and sustainability
funded a number of Impact Awards in recent years.
of current services. The remainder has been used
to support NairoBits alumni to establish themselves
as freelance ICT consultants, overseen by mentors.

Outcomes/Impact: NairoBits has a 90% success

rate in placing its young graduates into internships
with local ICT-related companies. More than 80% of
those internships eventually turn into full-time formal
employment.
The Stars approach has allowed NairoBits to invest

in its own sustainability, directing the funding to core
costs and improving programme design. The credibility
conferred by winning an Impact Award prize has also
led to greater profile and substantial partnership
opportunities for NairoBits.

Notes
1. all centres are among the industry sectors with the highest staff turnover. In South Africa, that figure is
C
estimated to be 20% per year. (http://www.thinksales.co.za/call-centre-staff-retention-success, 12 November
2013).
2. here are notable examples where the participation of youth has been prioritised in programme planning,
T
including the US-based Sierra Health Foundation (Paul and Lefkovitz, 2006).
3. here are encouraging examples of foundations that have placed the analysis of politics at the centre of the
T
design and evaluation process, such as The W.K. Kellogg Foundation (W.K. Kellogg Foundation, 2004) and the
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Melamed, 2012).
4. owever, foundations have also been criticised for following development “fads” (UK International Development
H
Committee, 2012) rather than “bread and butter” development interventions. It is argued that there is “too much
on glamorous science and long-term technology bets and not enough on putting boots on the ground in places
like Africa” (The Economist, 2008, in UK International Development Committee, 2012).
5. he Lorna Young Foundation in Kenya is an example that employs social media as a means of connecting youth
T
to development (Nairobi Business Monthly, 2013).
6. his is a collection of case studies of microfinance programmes targeting youth, concluding that scale has
T
not been achieved and that to do so the microfinance sector needs to seek more funding from donors. The
MasterCard Foundation’s YouthSave is cited as a promising example of scale being attempted.
7. his trend is due in part to the economic crisis in OECD countries and increased pressure to demonstrate value
T
for money, while the use of social media can make successes and failures easily viewed. Finally, this is in part
due to increased pressure for more accountability and transparency towards both beneficiaries and recipient
governments.
8. or example, within the Youth Employment Network, a joint UN, World Bank and ILO initiative established to act
F
as a vehicle to address the global challenge of youth employment, the number of evaluation and impact reports
increased twofold from 2007 to 2013. “Evidence” presentation, Youth Employment Network, 7 Feb 2013.
9. ccording to this comprehensive report, while huge amounts of funding are clearly being spent by foundations
A
in the international development sector, there are difficulties involved in calculating the total annual value of
current spending. The report quotes a number of estimates, including the OECD Development Assistance
Committee (DAC) which reports a global total of USD 22.2 billion in private grant spending in 2009 (representing
an increase of more than 100% since 2000). However, the reporting of spending data to the DAC is voluntary and
does not include corporate private giving. The US-based Hudson Institute, which does, puts 2009 philanthropic
giving at USD 52.5 billion, nearly double the OECD estimate. Even so, developing funding by foundations is
significantly lower than Official Development Assistance (ODA, funding paid by government donors), which was
USD 120 billion in the same year (2009).
10. T
he Guidelines for Effective Philanthropic Engagement (GEPEs) are a collaborative, non-binding and voluntary
dialogue tool developed under the leadership of netFWD, together with the European Foundation Centre (EFC),
STARS Foundation, UNDP and the Worldwide Initiative for Grantmakers Support (WINGS), with support from
the Rockefeller Foundation. The GEPEs were developed to initiate and enhance cooperation in addressing
global development challenges among foundations and other development actors, with particular focus on
governments and official donors. The Guidelines thus seek to bridge the ‘’collaboration/communication gap’’
between philanthropic organisations and other actors.
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PHILANTHROPY

For more information on the Centre, please see www.oecd.org/dev.

Director, OECD Development Centre

PHILANTHROPY AND YOUTH EMPOWERMENT © OECD 2014 3

4 Philanthropy and Youth Empowerment © OECD 2014

Additional contributors through discussions on October 25th at the OECD, Paris:

PHILANTHROPY AND YOUTH EMPOWERMENT © OECD 2014 5

PHILANTHROPY AND YOUTH EMPOWERMENT © OECD 2014 7

Figure 1. Education among youths aged 20-24 in Africa, 2000-2030

Source: OECD African Economic Outlook 2012.

PHILANTHROPY AND YOUTH EMPOWERMENT © OECD 2014 9

Reading this study

As foundations invest in initiatives specifically targeting youth, they find themselves

* See Glossary of Terms for all terms marked with an *.

10 PHILANTHROPY AND YOUTH EMPOWERMENT © OECD 2014

PHILANTHROPY AND YOUTH EMPOWERMENT © OECD 2014 11

I. SETTING THE STAGE

Why foundations focus on youth

Foundations work with young people for

PHILANTHROPY AND YOUTH EMPOWERMENT © OECD 2014 15

The landscape of foundations that work for youth empowerment

The landscape of foundations that work in youth empowerment includes:

• Individual family foundations. There is a broad range of individual or family-based

16 PHILANTHROPY AND YOUTH EMPOWERMENT © OECD 2014

• Foundations that emanate from collaborations between governments and civil

PHILANTHROPY AND YOUTH EMPOWERMENT © OECD 2014 17

Figure 2. The programme development cycle

PHILANTHROPY AND YOUTH EMPOWERMENT © OECD 2014 21

Innovate and design

Box 1. ICT and Youth Employment

Foundations also serve as conveners/brokers to bring different stakeholders, especially

22 PHILANTHROPY AND YOUTH EMPOWERMENT © OECD 2014

Some foundations provide much-needed funding for earlier-stage organisations,

PHILANTHROPY AND YOUTH EMPOWERMENT © OECD 2014 23

24 PHILANTHROPY AND YOUTH EMPOWERMENT © OECD 2014

PHILANTHROPY AND YOUTH EMPOWERMENT © OECD 2014 25

Innovate and design

Challenge: Youth are an elusive target.

Engage youth at three different levels in programme design:

PHILANTHROPY AND YOUTH EMPOWERMENT © OECD 2014 29

Challenge: Youth are living in a complex social context.

Box 2. Positive Youth Development

30 PHILANTHROPY AND YOUTH EMPOWERMENT © OECD 2014

Box 3. Alternative Risk Management Mechanisms: Impact Awards

PHILANTHROPY AND YOUTH EMPOWERMENT © OECD 2014 31

Challenge: Tailoring operations to meet the needs of specific segments of youth.

Encourage grantees to staff their programmes in a youth-centric manner. The actors

32 PHILANTHROPY AND YOUTH EMPOWERMENT © OECD 2014

Challenge: There is a serious lack of reliable data.

PHILANTHROPY AND YOUTH EMPOWERMENT © OECD 2014 33

Box 4. Foundations and Randomnized Controlled Trials

34 PHILANTHROPY AND YOUTH EMPOWERMENT © OECD 2014

Act as an intermediary/bridge between government and business. Governments and the

PHILANTHROPY AND YOUTH EMPOWERMENT © OECD 2014 35

The changing face of foundations needs to be acknowledged. Historically associated with

PHILANTHROPY AND YOUTH EMPOWERMENT © OECD 2014 39

42 PHILANTHROPY AND YOUTH EMPOWERMENT © OECD 2014